A contemporary new treasury of verse for every age of life. Use this book as a recipe book for life: turn to it when you need some advice on everything from growing up to getting old; look to it for consolation when the phone doesn't ring or for inspiration when you are trying to do the right thing; consult it for words that set the mood for weddings and funerals; keep it to hand in dealing with life's emergencies or reach for it for reassurance when you find a new wrinkle or an extra pound; or have it handy simply to read some of the finest poems in the English language. The poems within, old and new, chart every trajectory of human experience and emotion. Start with childhood, move on through the traumas of adolescence, and arrive at the serial destinations of love, marriage, parenthood, the loss of love, ageing, bereavement, with detours into work, dieting, infidelity and bad hair days. Whatever life has to throw at you there will be words here to make sense of it. Destined to be stained with wine, tears and marmite sandwiches in years to come, these are the poems to last you a lifetime.