In the Listening Summertime of the Dead

In this fascinating anthology there are many arresting short stories, among them 'Ogmios' in which a supercilious young writer brings out a book on a Celtic theme and later, in the sacred town of Glastonbury, comes face to face with the two last surviving worshippers of the deity he has treated flippantly. 'Ironclaw’s Last Stand' is about two bears who escaped from the Paris Garden, the bearpit of Shakespeare’s London, and traversed the countryside, plundering and ravaging until they came to Great Hurt Wood. ‘The Spectre’ is about the teacher at the Vienna Academy who interviewed Adolf Hitler and thought him unsuitably to study art – did this decision quicken the onset of the holocaust? ‘Disastertecture’ is about an architecture of despair, especially constructed to pre-empt nuclear war and 'The Crying in the Garden' portrays an elderly couple who are awarded the prize of a Weeping Man to stand in their ornamental garden.