2006-05-04 A searching and insightful enquiry into the last days of Shelley

This book is simply magnificent. It is concise, witty, perceptive and amusing. Julian Roach focuses on the last few weeks of Shelley's life, and like a fatal accident enquiry, reveals how the poet met his watery death. There is a feeling of tragic inevitability to his premature demise because the design of the boat was flawed, and Shelley's friend Edward Williams over-estimated his own sailing skills. I am not particularly interested in nautical matters, but Roach manages to make these details fascinating and accessible - I promise you it is not dull at all for those uninitiated in sailing!

Roach brilliantly depicts the events leading up to Shelley's death and then deals with the funeral, which imitated the death rites of the Ancient Greeks. Throughout the book he uses extracts from letters and notebooks, which confer a real sense of immediacy upon the unfolding events.

Where he really triumphs is in showing why Shelley still matters, in an age when many of us hardly ever read a line of poetry, never mind an epic work such as "Prometheus Unbound". His "radical indignation" directed at social injustice and tyranny is still relevant in a world in which millions go hungry, the environment is pillaged for gain, and many social injustices still exist in so-called developed, civilised nations. Shelley also strongly articulates the value of freedom, a precious value which cannot be taken for granted, as we are all learning to our cost. His valuation of freedom and social justice gives him a contemporary relevancy, over and above his greatness as a lyric poet.

Roach also points out the deficiencies in Shelley's character, namely his tendency to take advantage of Mary Godwin, Claire Clairmont and other female admirers, and his inability to square the fact that while he was promoting revolution, his own personal finances were entirely dependent upon the labour of those workers on his father's estates.

Roach's crowning achievement has been to send me back to Shelley's poetry and prose (which is undeservedly neglected) and to really engage with it again, and appreciate its power and beauty.