A COLLECTION of poems by an author now acknowledged to be one of the finest 20th Century writers on the English countryside will be launched at Tewkesbury Book Fair tomorrow (Saturday).

The Collected Poems of John Moore is being published to coincide exactly with the 35th anniversary of Moore's untimely death in 1967 at the age of 59.

The book contains around 50 of the 80 poems he wrote in his lifetime and span a period of 45 years.

Born in Tewkesbury and educated at Malvern, John Moore started work in the family business of Moore & Sons auctioneers, in Tewk-esbury High Street, near to the house where he was brought up and now a hotel.

Moore's first poems were actually published in the Malvern Gazette when he was a pupil at Malvern College.

His first 1930 book sold only 1,500 copies but was enough to make him believe he was better as an author than as an auctioneer's clerk.

He moved to London and wrote about 15 books before being called up as a pilot during the Second World War.

During the war he wrote more novels, finishing one in mid-Atlantic, in a howling October gale above a pack of U-boats gathered round a convoy.

Following the war he wrote Portrait of Elmbury swiftly followed by Brensham Village and The Blue Field. All three books, set in and around Tewkes-bury and Bredon Hill and known collectively as The Brensham Trilogy, were instant best-sellers and remain in print 50 years after publication.

September Moon, a love story set in the Ledbury hopfields, sold over 500,000 copies.

The new book is a limited-edition, numbered hard-back volume. It is published by the John Moore Society and printed by Ebenezer Baylis.

Copies of the book will be signed by Mrs Lucille Bell, the author's widow, bet-ween 10am and noon at the fair, being held in Tewkesbury Abbey refectory.

As well as his literary legacy, the author's name is maintained through the John Moore Countryside Museum in the town.