I do not think I could exaggerate the harshness of our schooling.

In these poems ancient and personal histories are intertwined inside a collage of contemporary events. But, as always, Montague celebrates how, even in an atmosphere of organised repression, the instinct for love can prevail.

A good year for poetry. Montague’s Time in Armagh is a very laid back genial performance covering in subject matter his schooldays in St Patrick’s College Armagh from 1941 to 1946 . . . The essence of the book is schoolboy reality, pain, loneliness, humiliation . . . he is a real poet . . . you will be enriched by experiencing some of the horrors of a good Catholic education through the sensibility of a brave and intelligent survivor, with a sense of humour:

Still to this late day, I rage blind

whenever I hear that hectoring tone,

trying to put another human being down.

The guilt givers who know what is right,

they can shove their rules. A system

without love is a crock of shite.’

James Simmons