Welsh writer Rhys Hughes regards this as his favourite book, and with good reason. It is one of the funniest and most intelligent books from the lighter side of macabre writing I have ever seen. It clamours with a cast of pirates, floppy-wristed welsh bards, explorers and inventors, imps, squonks, moving public houses, M R Jamesian revenants, M R Jamesian punctuation, blueberry pies, trousers, noses, clocks, carrots . . . I cant list them all here, there isn't room. Like all the best books, this quirky and surreal collection is hard to classify, but it lies in that region where the macabre and eerie worlds of classic horror and fantasy become a basis for something else - for a dark and original sense of humour filled with unexpected cross-references, homages, satires and black comedy. What makes this collection remarkable is not just the delightfully murky and skewed tales themselves, but the complex and ingenious way they all lock together and interrelate. I was going to say 'tessellate' but if this is a tessellation then it is filled with impossible-sided polygons, non-Euclidean three-dimensional geometry, unexpurgated curves and cracks from which blueberry-scented steam emerges with a screaming hiss. But what is without doubt is that 'The Smell of Telescopes' is a magnificent book and a cornerstone of the rather oddly shaped corner of literature that it occupies. Since the first edition went out of print, the unavailability of this book has been a great crime of literature. And Eibonvale Press is, as always, dedicated to the righting of the world's more substantial wrongs.

Rhys Hughes' funniest novel, revised and expanded in a luxurious new edition with new material, comprises the tall tales of one Mister Gum: adventurer, pervert, and the world's most infamous creative writing tutor. Through Mister Gum we encounter a brief and sordid history of Britain and British literature, come to challenge the presumptions of creative writing pedagogy and re-examine the limits of narrative (and good taste). This is a world of Lynne Trusse, an Empire's ludicrous obsession with the Rabelaisian and modern man's vain quest to reassert his dominance in all things. Joel Lane provides a brief but thoughtful introduction on this new edition, while Rhys Hughes offers an all-new afterword where he discusses the literary impact of the first edition of this most British of satirical novels.

There are few students in my class. When one considers what the subject is, this isn't surprising. I teach myself. In other words, I impart to my students facts and fancies based on my life and ideas. It's the least popular class in the university and I doubt it will be funded for another term. But none of that is my fault. I wanted to teach a proper discipline such as ecology, but the authorities wouldn't let me. They insisted that I teach myself; and as a result, I do so. The students are given an assignment. They each have to write a short piece about how I spend my free time. But this is information I've always kept secret. I can't imagine how they're expected to know anything about my private life, certainly not in detail. Clearly I'm being spied on. Unless it's guesswork? I read the essays anxiously. Yes, only some of them have got it right...