On a Ledge, New and Selected Poems stems from six previous collections, the first published in 1931, and includes work composed shortly before the writer's death in 1992.

These thirty-three poems are a celebration of Bryan Guinness's joie de vivre, exploration of love, dedication to family, and delight in music, painting and the natural world. They draw inspiration from settings in Ireland and southern England, and disclose a voice which expresses a richly contoured inner landscape.

His writings, with their paradoxical charm, soft colourings and ease of language, address themes both deeply personal and common to humanity, and they form a distinctive contribution to over sixty years of English and Irish letters.

THE AUTHOR
Bryan Guinness (Lord Moyne) was born on 27 October 1905 and went to Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, where he read Modern Languages. He was called to the English Bar in 1930.

He had a lifelong interest in the arts, and among his friends were Evelyn Waugh, Henry Lamb, Jack B. Yeats and Donal O'Sullivan. From his homes at Knockmaroon in Dublin and Biddesden in Wiltshire he lent support to such enterprises as the Guinness Poetry Awards and the Wexford Opera Festival. He was Vice-Chairman of Guinness's Brewery from 1949 to 1979, Governor of the National Gallery of Ireland, and a member of the Irish Academy of Letters. His first marriage in 1929 was to Diana Mitford, his second in 1936 to Elisabeth Nelson; and he had eleven children. He was author of twenty-one volumes of poetry, fiction, plays, children's stories and autobiography. He died on 6 July 1992.