The Sleeping Lord

'<i>The Sleeping Lord</i> is perhaps the best introductory volume to Jones's work; the contours can be seen most clearly here and the textures though rich are less elaborate than in <i>The Anathemata</i> since there is an open dramatic quality running through the book.' Peter Scupham <i>New Statesman</i><br><br>Published months before David Jones's death in 1974 and modestly presented by the author himself as a collection of 'fragments' <i>The Sleeping Lord </i>continued the exploration of themes begun by its predecessors <i>In Parenthesis</i> and <i>The Anathemata.</i> Set mainly in different parts of the Roman Empire either in the Holy Land or on the Celtic fringes animated by his Catholic faith and by his own experiences as a soldier formidably erudite and of a visionary intensity the book springs from a lifetime's concern with questions of history culture and religion. Mysterious musical and alive with a sense of the wilderness and the elements the poems show the startling development of Jones's imagination in his later years.