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For anyone familiar with Eliot, maybe through school or university, the image of the dry poet may be the dominant association. This is, in part, due to the fact that biographers have been restricted legally in what they could write about Eliot. Crawford, however, emphasises some more surprising elements of this boy's time growing up: scenes of playing with pals and many, many tales of 'mischief'. This, of course, only goes to show how strange it is that we forget even the greatest writers enjoyed such ordinary and simple pleasures. A particular gem from this trove is the information we learn about Eliot's grades, which are not as outstanding as you might expect. Nor, in fact, is his spelling. Crawford's achievement is to build up a more rounded and human profile of the poet that includes all his foibles and weaknesses – that is, the stuff we all have.

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