This book draws together an authoritative selection of all the writings needed to begin discovering the full story of Hamilton Finlay’s early work, his themes, preoccupations and vision of the philosophical transformed by the everyday.

The Book of St Andrews juxtaposes poems, stories and memoirs with scant regard to chronological order, but in the confidence that each contribution, lively in its own right, may also enhance the others. Here are specially written stories by Meaghan Delahunt, A. L. Kennedy, and Sarah Hall; new poems by Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon, and Don Paterson; memoirs by Kay Redfield Jamison and Ian Rankin.

Stuart Kelly provides a wry and erudite account of books destroyed, misplaced, never finished, or never even begun – from ancient Greek and Arabic masters through Shakespeare, Dante and Hemingway right up to the present day.