During the dry, hot June of 2000 I found myself at an Edward Thomas study weekend at Madingley Hall in Cambridge engaged in an intemperate debate with a fellow who insisted on denigrating Thomas’s incoherence as a philosopher, which I felt was about as fair as criticizing Maradona’s abilities as a submarine captain. Keeping a lid on this increasingly silly exchange was the weekend’s leader, a softly spoken and impressively moustachioed poet and academic called Jem Poster. Jem was blessed with extraordinary patience and tact. He coaxed us down from our respective teetering ledges by diverting our attention towards the delicacy of Thomas’s natural imagery, a subject upon which my tormentor and I could only agree, so that in the end neither of us felt as though we had either won or lost.