About Alan Brownjohn's last individual volume of poems, Ludbrooke and Others (2010), Sean O'Brien wrote in the Sunday Times, 'If you don't find yourself laughing at and with Ludbrooke, the chances are that you're a Puritan or dead or both.' Brownjohn's new book, intriguingly titled A Bottle, is one of his most varied and resourceful to date, featuring not only characteristically funny and entertaining poems and mysterious, gripping narratives (the title poem) but also moving tributes and elegies, love poems, and some absorbing social observation. It will confirm his reputation as 'one of the most reliably enjoyable of writers.'