At a publishing party in Bedford Square
The critic is at ease
With lots of lady novelists
To flatter and to tease
He’s witty, irresistible,
Completely on the ball
A few more wines, who knows,
He might make love to them all
But one by one they disappear
With a smile, and a promise to phone
And suddenly it’s midnight
And suddenly he’s alone
He surveys the litter, arty,
In search of a back to stab
Anger jangling inside him
Like an undigested kebab
Across the ashen carpet
He staggers, glass in hand
And corners a northern poet
Whose verses he can’t stand
As if a bell had sounded
A space had quickly cleared
They were in a clinch and fighting
And the waiters, how they cheered
There was a flurry of books and mss
Bruises on the waxen fruit
A right to a left-over agent
Blood on the publisher’s suit
A hook to a Booker Prize runner-up
A left to a right-wing hack
A straight to the heart of the matter
And the critic’s on his back
An uppercut to an uppercrust diarist
From an anthropologist, pissed,
An Art Editor’s head in collision
With a Marketing Manager’s fist
Two novelists gay, were soon in the fray
Exchanging blow for blow
As the battle seeped into the Square
Like a bloodstain into snow
And though, at last, the police arrived
They didn’t intervene
‘What a way to launch a book.
Bloody typical Bloomsbury scene!’
All that now of course is history
And people come from far and wide
To see the spot where literary
Giants fought and died
Holding cross-shaped paper bookmarks
They mouth a silent prayer
In memory of those who fell
At the Battle of Bedford Square.