Paperback edition of this winner of both the 1999 "Whitbread Book Of The Year Award", and the South Bank Show Literature Award. Having sold over 75,000 copies, the hardback edition was the most successful poetry hardback since "Birthday Letters". "An extraordinary piece of writing...this was a master poet breathing life into a great work of art which has only been known to a small number of academics" Eric Anderson, chairman of the "Whitbread Book Of The Year Award".

Seamus Heaney was born in County Derry in Northern Ireland. Death of a Naturalist, his first collection of poems, appeared in 1966, and was followed by poetry, criticism and translations which established him as the leading poet of his generation. In 1995 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, and twice won the Whitbread Book of the Year, for The Spirit Level (1996) and Beowulf (1999). Stepping Stones, a book of interviews conducted by Dennis O'Driscoll, appeared in 2008; Human Chain, his last volume of poems, was awarded the 2010 Forward Prize for Best Collection. He died in 2013. His translation of Virgil's Aeneid Book VI was published posthumously in 2016 to critical acclaim, followed in 2018 by 100 Poems, a selection of poems from his entire career, chosen by his family.