Prince Charming

Prince Charming is the story of one of our great poets and literary mavericks. It tells, in frank detail and with irresistible relish, of its author's South England childhood and schooldays; his post-war stint in the army, which ended in disgrace and imprisonment; his years in Paris, during which he was involved in publishing Beckett and wrote pornography; his return to England, where he was imprisoned for the second time (as a member of the anti-nuclear Committee of 100), offended T. S. Eliot, participated in the new satire movement of poetry, and invented the poster poem.

In effect, Prince Charming shows what it has been like for a twentieth-century poet to have lived entirely on his wits, often in defiance of convention and close to disaster, but with sufficient spirit and luck to have contributed, as Christopher Logue has done so distinctively, to the cultural richness of our times.