This isn't a one-volume history of post-War British poetry. Given the mass of writing about the post-War period, Duncan like a footballer, says he must "go for space". He has "selectively" gathered unfamiliar information. As he says, "Generally, if you read ten books on recent literary history you do find that they do all say the same things. This makes reading them a wearing experience. I intend to bang on until you complain about me including too much."

Acknowledgements Preface Chronology Introduction: A case that needs to be made The closing of the 1940s; and the prehistory of the underground Reflexivity and sensitivity A Various Art and the Cambridge Leisure Centre Precision and the influence of photography on the poem Objectivism and the self-investment with modernist legitimacy The cognitively critical tradition: Madge, Tomlinson, Crozier, Chaloner, Fisher Secrets of Nature: documentary, group feeling, and propaganda Avant-garde legitimacy, continued; Neo-Objectivism The procurement of the information in poetry West-bloc dissidents, or the history of ideas in poetry The dissolution of the horizon: New Romantic poetry Moral man in an immoral society: personalism and authenticity in the 1940s New Romantic poets In the land of the not-quite day; or, the frisson of ruins. David Gascoyne Bad science, pulp topography: Iain Sinclair Radical toxins and lingering hallucinogens: Counter-culture and New Age Apocalyptic foreglow, and origins of the Counter-Culture Peripheral nationalism and collective disloyalty The 1970s and Left versus Right in the Labour Party Decentralisation: the ideal of workers' control Under the ground, into the Crypt Conclusion Bibliography Index