THE poems of one of the country's finest writers on rural England is being kept alive by two friends who are helping to launch a compendium of his work.

John Shakles, founder and chairman of the John Moore Society, has written the foreword to a collection of 50 of Moore's poems due to be launched at Tewkesbury Book Fair on July 27.

Working with him is Graham Downie from Studley, an old friend of Mr Shakles, who has illustrated the book.

Moore, who was born in 1907 and died in 1967, wrote some 40 books, his most famous being Portrait of Elmbury, Brensham Village and The Blue Field.

But the author was also a keen poet, his first poems being published in the Redditch Advertiser's sister paper, The Malvern Gazette, while he was a pupil in the town.