Inheritance

In his first collection of poetry after a career as a novelist spanning five decades, Paul Bailey offers in Inheritance an intimate reckoning. The poems mine memories of childhood, illness and lost loves with unflinching honesty, a generous humour born of self-knowledge, and great depth of feeling.

‘Unsentimental, funny, affectionate, deeply moving, the poems read almost off-the-cuff but work at levels of exactness, kindness and observation that throw open a whole closed century of English class-shift and time-shift, in a loving and piercing evocation of family, childhood, love, loss, sangfroid, survival, and with a celebration of all openness, especially openness to our losses and mortalities. Inheritance is quite an inheritance: a slim, calm volume whose resonance is huge.’ – Ali Smith, New Statesman 'Books of the Year
‘Inheritance is a collection to engage not only the reader who knows all about contemporary poetry and probably writes it, but everyone who appreciates elegant craft, shapely storytelling and delicate love lyrics, with a touch of acerbic mischief to offset melancholy and no “poetic” pretentiousness whatever.’ – Carol Rumens, Guardian

Paul Bailey was born in South London on in 1937. He won a scholarship to the Central School of Speech and Drama in 1953 and later worked as an actor. Following At the Jerusalem (1967; reissued 2019) he wrote a dozen novels (two of them shortlisted for the Booker Prize) as well as biographies and memoirs. He died in 2024.

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