Music at Midnight, by John Drury – review

When John Drury, himself an Anglican divine, told James Fenton (the son of a canon of Christ Church) that he was writing about George Herbert, Fenton replied with gnomic brio ‘The poet!’ adding ‘Both in intention and execution.’ Herbert’s authentic lightness and strength, pathos and wit, alertness and sympathy have long been as precious to poets as to fellow believers.

In Music at Midnight Drury has produced a pleasantly old-fashioned account of Herbert’s life and poetry which will serve as an introduction to new readers and remind devotees of many favourite passages, sometimes interestingly contextualised. He declares at the outset that ‘poetry comes from life’ and that ‘the biographical structure of this book maps out the ground which produced the poetry’. The book is lavishly illustrated and particularly sensitive to landscape and architecture.

Any biographer of Herbert has to contend with Walton’s Life, written in 1670 looking back across the chasm of the Civil War.