Ski-ing with his family in the Alpine resort of Val d’Isère, a backbench Tory MP on holiday encounters a fellow officer from his long buried past, when just out of his teens he was serving a lonely year in the Brigade of Guards in the post-war Malayan campaign, casting himself a poet of lofty aspiration. In later life, his scramble for recognition as a wordy politician, and with his first wife replaced by an ambitious competitor, has killed off the youthful dreamer, to whom a particular poem of spontaneous immediacy had momentarily become the template of the person his soul awaited: fifty spontaneous lines his re-encountered fellow Guardsman had capriciously bereft him of forever.
The Lost Poem
Published by Tom Stacey
"Tom Stacey’s adventurous life has given him extraordinary tales to tell. A born writer, he offers us reflective wisdom put down memorably and pleasurably in a unique voice. His work has been acclaimed by writers as varied as Nina Bawden, Sybille Bedford, Orville Prescott, Rowan Williams, Christopher Hill and John Gray who described The Man Who Knew Everything as ‘a near-forgotten masterpiece’ when naming it as his joint Book of the Year for the New Statesman – ‘one of the few books I’ve ever read that I finished in one sitting and then immediately had to read again’." View all posts by Tom Stacey
Published