A fascinating new study of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 'The Private Lives of the Ancient Mariner' illuminates the poet's deeply troubled personality and stormy personal life through a highly original study of his relationships. In her last published work the celebrated Coleridgean scholar, Molly Lefebure, provides profound psychological insights into Coleridge through a meticulous study of his domestic life, drawing upon a vast and unique body of knowledge gained from a lifetime's study of the poet, and making skilful use of the letters, poems and biographies of the man himself and his family and friends. The author traces the roots of Coleridge's unarguably dysfunctional personality from his earliest childhood; his position as his mother's favoured child, the loss of this status with the death of his father, and removal to the 'Bluecoat' school in London. Coleridge's narcissistic depression, flamboyance, and cold-hearted, often cruel, rejection of his family and of loving attachments in general are examined in detail. The author also explores Coleridge's careers in journalism and politics as well as poetry, in his early, heady 'jacobin' days, and later at the heart of the British wartime establishment at Malta. His virtual abandonment of his children and tragic disintegration under the influence of opium are included in the broad sweep of the book which also encompasses an examination of the lives of Coleridge's children, upon whom the manipulations of the father left their destructive mark. Molly Lefebure unravels the enigma that is Coleridge with consummate skill in a book that will bring huge enjoyment to any reader with an interest in the poet's life and times. Molly Lefebure (1919-2013) was a wartime journalist, novelist, children's author, writer on the topography of Cumbria, biographer, and independent scholar and lecturer. She is the author of two other works on the Coleridge family and a volume on the world of Thomas Hardy. Lefebure was secretary to Professor Keith Simpson (1907-1985), the renowned Home Office Pathologist and head of the Department of Forensic Medicine at Guy's Hospital, with whom she worked during the Second World War. While surrounded by London's crime, grime and gruesome deaths she wrote a memoire, published as 'Evidence for the Crown' (1955), which formed the basis for the successful television drama, 'Murder on the Home Front' (2013). Having been fascinated by her work in the mortuaries, Lefebure continued at Guy's Hospital and studied drug addiction for six years, which led her to write her first biography of Coleridge ('Samuel Taylor Coleridge: A Bondage of Opium', 1974). 'Private Lives of the Ancient Mariner' is the distillation of the lifetime's thought of one whom many regard as having been one of the foremost Coleridgean scholars in the world. 'Molly Lefebure's insight into Coleridge's marriage is second to none. Her perception of him as a man and a poet is intellectually formidable. She can be both critical and understanding on the same page. There is a full field of Coleridge scholars at the moment, but in my view Molly was in there first, and is still the outstanding one.' From the Foreword by Melvyn Bragg.

This book reviews the current trends and challenges of regional integration and trade in Africa. It provides valuable policy recommendations aimed at stimulating the debate among the government, private sector and development community on the ways to promote regional trade for Africa's economic development.

The remarkable true story, as seen in the brilliant TV adaptation now showing on Netflix! Murder on the Home Front follows Molly Lefebure as she navigates working for the Home Office's chief forensic pathologist while living in a bomb-stricken London during the second world war. One ordinary day in 1941, forensic pathologist Dr Keith Simpson asks a keen young journalist to be his secretary. Although the 'horrors of secretarial work' don't appeal to Molly Lefebure, she's intrigued to find out exactly what goes on behind a mortuary door. Capable and curious, 'Miss Molly' quickly becomes indispensible to Dr Simpson as he meticulously pursues the truth. Accompanying him from sombre morgues to London's most gruesome crime scenes, Molly observes and assists the investigations into murders which, despite the war around them, are still being perpetrated.