In A Foreign Country, Nigel Pantling takes us to some strange places - the exotic, the imaginary and the rediscovered past - and for each he serves up a heady local brew, equal parts memory, invention, wit and menace. Here, North Korean tourists rub shoulders with Syrian adventurers, the newly dead with a City lothario, Popeye and Olive Oyl with Cold War warriors. Surprising and unsettling by turns, these poems are a whistle-stop journey though different times, countries and customs, enriched by deep personal experience.

Nigel Pantling served as an officer in the British Army Of the Rhine during the Cold War and in Northern Ireland during 'The Troubles', as a Home Office civil servant under the Thatcher Government, and as a merchant banker during the years of rampant mergers and acquisitions of the 90s. He is now a strategic adviser to company chief executives, and lives in north London.