Catherine Cookson"s previous collection of essays and poems, Let Me Make Myself Plain, was published in response to the enthusiastic reception of a series of late night radio Epilogues. Now, following the remarkable success of that volume, she has compiled a further selection of thoughts, recollections, and observations on life - and death - together with another collection of the poems she prefers to describe as "prose on short lines". As in Let Me Make Myself Plain, and indeed in the whole of her extensive writing, Catherine Cookson expresses her thoughts and feelings with remarkable candour and considerable wit. Above all, though, it is her down-to-earth common sense that shines through, as the forthright nature of her views expresses the hard-won philosophy of life she has developed for herself. In Plainer Still, she reveals many of the qualities that allow her to draw upon the great inner strength she needs to continue the battle of life - one that has, for the past fifty...