Edna Longley's new edition of Edward Thomas's poetry is a joy - generous in every way, in size, elegant Paul Nash cover(they were wartime friends) and above all is the full and convincing commentary on poems, especially those which show Thomas's dialectical working-out of dilemmas and decisions. Her exploration of the background to the poems in prose writing, letters and notebooks creates an intriguing picture of this complex, gifted writer whose life was so sadly cut short just two years after he began writing poetry.