For more years than I care to remember I have nursed the idea of publishing my entire collection of verse in a single volume.

This ambition was activated recently when I downsized my accommodation from two-home (eight-bedroom) luxury to a one bedroom apartment. I rented a garage adjacent to the apartment block and had all my accumulated “junk” delivered to, and stored within it. It was just a few boxes short of a century!

It has taken me several months to sort through this packed paraphernalia, accumulated over more than 50 years, consisting mainly of books, but occasionally revealing hidden “treasures”, including files and folders containing writings that anteceded my memory. I realised that there were several poems that had never been published. This restimulated my idea of collating all this poetry into a book of my collected verse.

I then discovered much more material which, while not qualifying for the grandiose title of poetry, seemed to deserve an airing and a greater audience than was available to it within the confines of cardboard packing chests. This jogged my memory of an ancient Faber book entitled Verse and Worse and I thought that something along those lines might be more appropriate than the verse alone (much of which might, incidentally, have qualified more realistically for the second half of the Faber title!).

But the meanderings of my imagination did not stop there. The discovery of material written at significant (certainly for me, and possibly for others) periods of history suggested that the printed material could profitably be annotated so as to make it relevant to the period and circumstances that attended its birth, as well as a number of "digressions" to set it within the context of economic, social and political history that might enliven its pages.

Thus we have this finalised work and the explanation of both its title and its now elongated sub-title.

There are a number of further “pearls” in addition to the material published in this e-book. Some of this material is mentioned in the bibliographical section at the end of the book; for example drama, musical comedy and magazine publishing, editing, and writing. I have also however, over the years, produced about 40 ballads (music and lyrics) mainly in the 1950s and 1960s, the pre-Beatles era, that were unmarketable when popular music taste changed so dramatically. Some of them were, however, orchestrated by my late uncle Ronald “Spike” Hornett, a jazz and swing tenor saxophonist and clarinetist who had played with some of the leading bands of the period, such as Geraldo, Teddy Joyce, Johnny Claes and his Claypigeons, and Harry Gold and His Pieces of Eight.

Spike Hornett in later years (click on thumbnail to enlarge)

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During service with the RAF in World War II Spike helped form the Stardusters, a co-operative band that achieved some well-merited fame. He arranged for some of my songs to be recorded and they were sung by, amongst others, my dear late friend Zack Matalon, who at one time shared my home with Julie Felix – a famed guitarist and folk singer - shortly after her arrival from the United States and before she achieved fame. Subsequently he married the international dancer Elizabeth Seal.

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I have also, for space considerations, excluded the dozens of book reviews I have contributed over the years in my own name and under a variety of pseudonyms, most of which filled me with much pride at the time of writing, and are still capable of bringing reminiscent pleasure when I chance upon them. They remain available to readers on my Nurturing Potential website.