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“... have it when we read them in the Fifties, and it’s what makes song-writers sound like sages – Ian Dury has, appropriately, done a song to back the television credits for The Secret Diary. It is a quality which seems to be anti-authoritarian, but only because it notices how things have changed before the rules about what can be said, and assumptions ...”

“... the things that went unspoken in his lifetime (‘Died before we’d done much talking’ goes the Ian Dury song ‘My Old Man’) can finally get said, now he’s no longer around to inhibit you. Whether there are scores to settle, or tears to shed, you can be candid, knowing he won’t hear. Regrets? There’ll be a few, but – as Kingsley Amis’s ...”

“... Poetry written in dialect seems to be undergoing a resurgence. Tony Harrison has made extensive use of Northern idioms. Tom Paulin has been busy raiding Ulster (and, I suspect, Scottish) dictionaries. Craig Raine has produced a manifesto, ‘Babylonish Dialects’, on dialect’s behalf. And several of the books under review here – by Scots, Welshmen and British West Indians – cannot be read without the glossaries which they thoughtfully provide ...”