The key to Brown's interpretation of Yeats is magic. Yeats had a lifelong interest in magic, spiritualism and the paranormal. Brown argues with great force that it is this preoccupation which lies at the root of his personality and which is the key to so much else. His hatred of late Victorian materialism informed not just his poetry but also his involvement with the Irish nationalism cause. For all his Irish nationalism, however, there was also an 'English Yeats to which Brown gives very full attention. The poet was formed by his English experience as much as his Irish, and he lived nearly half his adult life in London.

Brilliantly written, Terence Brown's biography is the most complete and unified picture yet published of Ireland's greatest poet.