"Coleridge came alone, by moonlight, by way of Striding Edge". So says Dorothy Wordsworth"s journal for the magical year of 1800. But how did he manage to avoid breaking his reckless neck on that fearsome route between Keswick and Grasmere? And how did Dorothy manage to share her beloved brother with her best friend, Mary? There"s tragedy and humour in this tale of desperate Lake poets and their womenfolk. The same group who reached for the stars and ended in the gutter in "Down to a Sunless Sea" are playing for yet higher stakes in the Cumbrian landscape. Reason versus romanticism, butcher"s bills versus inspiration, tame marriage versus wild infatuation, all stack up to form a perilous ridge that craves wary walking . .