Humfrey Coningsby

<p>For Humfrey Coningsby - lord of the manor of Neen Sollars in South Shropshire - the world was a place of wonders and despair of love found and then forsaken. He was a cantankerous sentimental petulant traveler; a gentleman soldier; a sly linguist; a confidant of Princes and Emperors; a receiver of such delights and a doomed versifier. He walked out of this world on 10th October 1610 - and now he walks back in with barely a word of explanation.</p><p>This series of poems complaints explanations and demands for satisfaction forms the narrative of a life still being lived over four hundred years later. The Siege of Strigonium in 1594 was wretched; life in Aleppo in 2014 is worse.</p><p><strong>Johnathan Davidson</strong> was born in 1964 in Didcot South Oxfordshire and now lives in Coventry. He won an Eric Gregory award in 1990 and is the author of <em>Moving the Stereo</em> (Jackson's Arm 1993) <em>The Living Room</em> (Arc 1994) <em>A Horse Called House</em> (Smith/Doorstop 1997) and<em> Early Train</em> (Smith/Doorstop 2011). He has had eight radio plays broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and 4 along with radio adaptations of Geoffrey Hill's <em>Mercian Hymns</em> and W.S. Graham's <em>The Nightfishing</em>.</p>