In this twelfth collection of essays and reviews Jim Burns looks back to the 1930s and the problems faced by some writers of the period. Novelists such as Dawn Powell, Charles Reznikoff, and Tess Slesinger are spotlighted. Two writers, Denys Val Baker and Norman Levine, who lived in St Ives when it was a hotbed of creative activity, have their work analysed, with specific reference to the novels and stories they wrote about the artistic community in the town. More painters are dealt with in essays about John Nash, Modigliani, and the four Scottish Colourists, Peploe, Caddell, Hunter, and Fergusson. The Beats appear in essays about the little magazines that featured them, Gary Snyder, and American expatriates in Mexico in the 1950s. Music has its place in reviews of books about Dave Brubeck and Jazz from Detroit. And there is an evaluation of the pleasures of British music hall and its personalities. Banned writers, a busted bookseller, and events in the histories of Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, not to mention Paris and London, go to complete the picture.