In the forty years that have passed since the untimely death of Nick Drake, he has come to stand as a figure of doomed youth, an image exacerbated by the hauntingly fragile canon of music he left behind. There have been a plethora of books published about him that have seen biographers interviewing those who knew him and played with him, trying desperately to piece together the fragments of his life that led to his overdose at the age of 26. This book marks the first officially sanctioned book from the Drake estate, put together with considerable care and attention by his sister, Gabrielle Drake, herself a well known actress. In her introduction she states: “People who have tried to analyse Nick, in an attempt to anchor him in their world, have nearly always exposed more about themselves than they have about their subject.” Before going on to say: “…this book will not try to expose Nick to the full beam of an analytical spotlight. Rather, it will be a series of sideways glances; an attempt to cast a few shards of light on the poet, the musician, the friend, the son, the brother, who was also more than all of these, and as indefinable as the morning mist.” Running to over 400 pages we have chapters written by Gabrielle alongside a cast of Nick’s friends from his prep school days through to his time at Cambridge. What emerges is a picture of a privileged, thoughtful, funny young man. His parents Rodney and Molly come across as caring and supportive, desperate to find a cure for their son’s fluctuating mental well- being. Rodney’s diaries of Nick’s last last few months at the family home in Tanworth-in-Arden are published here for the first time, they make heartbreaking reading when set against the jaunty letters that father and son exchanged just a few years before. This is a superb book that anyone touched by Nick’s music will find fascinating. JM