The Smell of Summer Grass

'Candid, observant and often very funny' Daily Mail 'A delightful memoir - a reminder that the very best writing starts at home' Robert McCrum, Observer Praise for `The Mighty Dead': `Thrilling and unsettling ... [a] wonderfully expressive alloy of travelogue, scholarship and advocacy, which broods with heartfelt grace ... Nicolson's books always shine with the Homeric virtues of eloquence, passion, generosity, audacity and candour ... He does them proud' Boyd Tonkin, Independent `A beautiful study: full of insight, generosity and unaffected passion. The writing is exhilarating' Guardian `A thrillingly energised book ... it transmits a whole worldview at once decipherable and dramatically strange ... To read Homer is to be struck by what Nicolson calls `time-vertigo' - and this book is one that holds your hand and encourages you to peer over the edge. To read it is to have a fat pair of Homeric jump-leads attached from Nicolson's sparkling and crackling faculties to your own' Spectator `As gripping as a thriller and as delicately constructed as a sonnet ... an astonishing tour de force that reveals Homer to be at once as ancient as papyrus and as modern as MTV ... Not only does he have an inward understanding of how Homer's poetry works, his own prose also has the sharp glitter of a poet's eye' Telegraph