In 1975 I recorded, on one of the two B sides of a vinyl LP (Words & Music, produced by Hansjorg Mayer) some of the pages of the first version of A Humument. I spoke them into a huge hairy ball of a microphone amidst a tangle of wires and cables.

A sudden wave of critical attention (noted here) has tended to concentrate more often on the words rather than the images of the book. I was particularly touched by the appearance of a page on the cover of the Poetry Review announcing a fine article by Chris McCabe. Time, I thought, for Jolson to sing again especially as Tom Service had just shown me the recording device he uses for his BBC interviews, a cordless microphone no bigger than a Mars bar.

Here for a start, in full son et lumière, is a page I've just finished. More to come and, to quote the quote from Dickens that was the original title of The Waste Land, I do the police in different voices.