The remains

Annie Freud's new book The Remains was inspired by a visit to an exhibition of Sung Dynasty works on paper, and their unselfconscious blending of illustration and poetry.

However the book has its imaginative origins in a huge collection of broken household china amassed by the author while digging her garden.

Stranger items also came to light: a minute horseshoe, a fossilised scallop shell, a rusted metal silhouette of a hound.

These worn shards and talismans soon began work on Freud's singular imagination, and this extraordinary collection of poetry and art is the result.

The Remains is concerned with what is left when everything seems broken or lost - and the new and unexpected things that happen when they are found again.

Beautifully illustrated in full colour by the poet herself, The Remains is a powerful book of consolation and surprise from one of our most original literary voices.