Welcome to Notion Books

Notion Books is the trade name under which books written by David Morphet are published.

Poetry

David Morphet has written poetry on a wide variety of themes, including love, ambition, loss, integrity, and the natural world.

Please follow the Poems link for a selection from each volume.

Biography

Louis Jennings MP - Editor of the New York Times and Tory Democrat, in which the Times Literary Supplement (TLS)  found David Morphet “in full control of his subject”, charts the career of a Victorian journalist and politician whose influence stretched from India during the Raj, to the American Civil War and finally with Lord Randolph Churchill, championing Tory Democracy – the Conservative bid for the hearts and minds of newly enfranchised working class voters.

Current Publications

The following current publications are available now. Click on the front cover to go the book's page.

Louis Jennings MP - Editor of the New York Times and Tory Democrat A lively biography of a Nineteenth Century editor and politician, who brought down Boss Tweed in New York and went on to become Lord Randolph Churchill's chief lieutenant in the British Parliament.	Approaching Animals - from A to Z Poems exploring what the animal kingdom means to us, visually and imaginatively. It contains 45 individual animal poems from Albatross to Zebu.
Seventy-Seven Poems A first selection in which the leading British poet, Dannie Abse, identified “a great gift of evoking atmosphere”.	The Angel and the Fox Poems dealing with ambition and loss as well as landscape and memory. David Holbrook found it 'full of irony about experience that demands close attention'.
39 Ways of Looking A sequence of 39 poems which visit many different landscapes in a quest for the authentic, followed by sequences on the autonomic nervous system, dreams and maps. Michael Hamburger identified 'a most intelligent and magnanimous way of looking' in this volume.	The Silence of Green A central sequence of 12 poems addresses the unheard, complex processes of the plant world. A further 32 poems on individual plants - from yarrow and tumbleweed to aloe and rattan - give rise to a wide range of narratives and moods. The volume concludes with 14 Songs and Observations. Dannie Abse found this 'a remarkable book, its sequences all of a piece'. Anthony Thwaite admired its 'pertinacity of observation and clear lines'.
The Maze - a daydream in five cantos An imaginative excursion into poetic landscape, involving calls on Pope (whose gardener becomes the poet's guide), Dr Johnson, Wordsworth, Blake, Keats and Ezra Pound. It is written in terza rima.