Book review: Told Again

Walter de la Mare (with a new introduction by Philip Pullman)

MENTION Walter de la Mare, and most Irish people of a certain vintage will recall his name from poems learned in school, particularly the evocative Edgar Allan Poestyle verses of ‘The Listeners’ (‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller, / Knocking on the moonlit door; / And his horse in the silence champed the grasses / Of the forest’s ferny floor...)

De la Mare was certainly best known as a poet, but he was also widely acknowledged as one of finest ghost story writers of his era, in addition to being an acclaimed and award-winning novelist, deeply admired by such literary giants as WH Auden, Dylan Thomas and Vladimir Nabokov.