Douglas Dunn is one of the leading younger British poets. A prolific writer, he has also written plays for radio and television, and much literary criticism. From 1971 to 1978 he also served as poetry reviewer of Encounter. He has recently published a collection of short stories, Secret Villages (1985). Born in Scotland but self-exiled in England for seventeen years until his move back to Scotland in 1984, he has written that "Much, but not all of my work, is drawn from an obsession and love of Lowland Scotland, its people, places, values and histories."

Douglas Eaglesham Dunn was born in the village of Inchinnan in Renfrewshire, Scotland, in the immediate countryside to the west of Glasgow. The son of William Douglas Dunn, a factory worker, and Margaret McGowan Dunn, he started writing as a child and was, as he remembers, "quite bookish ... but also an outdoors boy." He attended local schools...