described in its Preface an earlier book， Blindfold Games， as<br >being only incidentally autobiography， but more accurately<br >"the raw material out of which I began to write poetry". The<br >same principle applies here， at least as far as the autobio-<br >graphical part is concerned. Coastwise Lights turns out mainly to<br >be about friends - painters and writers - who were close to me<br >and who have since died. I had not intended the book to take<br >such a shape， but there it is.<br > Blindfold Games began in India and ended， after describing a<br >Sussex adolescence， Oxford and five years in the Navy， in<br >occupied Germany. It was about coming to terms with war and<br > a hunger for writing replacing a passion for cricket.<br > The present volume takes the story from x 947 to 1978， when I<br >returned to London after living in Sussex for twenty-five years.<br >During most of this time I was working for the Observer， as well<br > taking over the London Magazine in x 961 and starting up as a<br > publisher in I965. As in BlindJbld Games I have used poems<br > written at the time as illustrations and to fill in a few gaps. Some<br > late to the text， others to relationships or derive from working<br >i]ourneys in Europe， Australia， Africa and the Caribbean.<br >