Butler, Hubert: The Appleman and The Poet (HB)

The Lilliput Press, hardcover Publication Date: October 1, 2012 Publisher Marketing: The Appleman and the Poet, the fifth volume of Hubert Butler's essays, completes a thirty-year odyssey embarked upon by The Lilliput Press in 1984. Our flagship author has finally come home, welcomed by Fintan O'Toole in his foreword: 'One of the great joys of these essays is the discovery of sentences as sharp and lithe as a Toledo rapier.' Beginning with 'Russian Dispatches 1932-1946, ' Butler gives an evocative description - from the viewpoint of a bourgeois teacher - of a society in dissolution, before the onset of Stalin's Great Purge, as show farms give way to show trials, the iron curtain descends across Europe, and Communism and Christianity lock horns. Part Two, 'Peace News Papers 1948-1958, ' largely derives from the weekly Peace News, in which Butler debates and defends with steely precision Ireland's neutrality, pacifism, and the integrity of Yugoslavia, 'where we know that in 1941 and 194