Fortuna

Poetry runs through the generations of the ancient Douglas line. There was Gavin Douglas, a sixteenth-century bishop and one of Scotland’s most famous Renaissance characters and poets, and William Douglas, who wrote the words for the song ‘Annie Lawrie’. Gawain’s father was a famous amateur reciter of Shakespeare’s sonnets, and his great uncle, Lord Alfred Douglas, was recognized by Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw as one of England’s outstanding poets.

Gawain has continued this family tradition, in the belief that it is a priceless heritage which it would be very easy to lose. This collection, Fortuna, is a distillation of his poetry from the last thirty-six years, from the earliest poems, written on Osea Island, Essex, aged twenty-two, up to the present time. Candid, profoundly personal and at times formally experimental, these poems are never less than engaging and more than worthy of the Douglas name.

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