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I've been chatting to Jonathan Allison today. The Derry raised academic, now Associate Professor of EnglishÌýat the University of Kentucky, is in Belfast to launch his Letters of Louis MacNeice which is published by Faber next week.Ìý

The book, a mighty 768 page doorstop of a thing, has been silently rebuking me for the past few weeks to open it and read it. But there was a fear factor. A residual memory of school and exams and learning. Well IÌýwas wrong. The book is an incredible first hand account of the man behind the poetry. The husband, the father, the lover, the friend.

MacNeice's love of letter writing began as a child. A Thursday afternoon in 1914, the 7 year old MacNeiceÌýwrites to his dad in the Rectory in Carrickfergus saying "My dear Dad, I got ten for conduct this morning. The kitten is alright...we gathered some apples this morning." Footnotes reveal the 5 year old child who saw the Titanic leave the Port of Belfast standing at the lough shore with his father in Carrickfergus.

The letters continue as he heads to school in Sherbourne in Dorset, onto Marlborough College, onto Oxford, where in a letter to his parents he says that Anthony Blunt, his school friend, had discussed his career with "a master at Marlboro' the other day and they agreed that it was obvious that I should write. This, of course, many people have said of me. Of course, it is a rotten career financially and I suppose one should begin by doing something else".

The "something else" was a career as a ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ producer. One of the most telling letters in the collection comes at the end.

His last letter to his daughter. He apologises for his "straggly handwriting" and says he isÌýin bedÌýwith "a mystery temperature". He had been recording sound effects in a cave in Yorkshire for one of his ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ radio programmes when he took ill. The letter is dated the 20th August 1963. Louis MacNeice died on the 3rd September 1963.Ìý

At the end of the book there's a note of a private correspondence between Corinna his daughter and Johnny about how she wasn't allowed in to the hospital to see her father before he died. Her aunt said that if he saw her her father would know it was serious."So I did not get to see him before he took off".Ìý

If you thought you knew Louis MacNeice through hisÌýpoetry, then read this for the man.ÌýÌýÌýÌý

The Letters of Louis MacNeice selected and edited by Jonathan Allison is published in hardback by Faber

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