The Books of Albion: The Collected Writings of Peter Doherty

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Jeremy Harte combines folklore scholarship with a lively style to show what the presence of fairies meant to people's lives.

Ultimately, this book is like everything else Pete Doherty has ever done - at times brilliant, at others annoying, but never less than interesting. Albion's Secret History is a highly intelligent and loving meditation on creativity and artistic freedoms, pursued over decades by a host of innovators, to those who had previously been denied on the basis of their position within English culture.

As well as early versions of song lyrics, the Books of Albion often contain writings or drawings from various other people, whether Doherty's close friends or one-time acquaintances, including Carl Barat, John Hassall, Mick Jones, Wolfman, Kate Moss, Mik Whitnall, Jake Fior, and the Queens of Noize.

Albion’s Secret History is an enjoyable skim through an enormous subject… Mankowski must be applauded for his guts… The terrific chapter on Peter Cook and Evelyn Waugh when talking of class privilege is kept on-point. These twenty-odd books - edited and condensed into one volume - are filled with poems, drawings, personal reflections, lyrics and collages and form an intimate insight into the one of the music world's most talented and controversial figures.

Better known to the tabloids as Pete, rather than Peter, he's been lauded and vilified in equal measure, and thanks to his on-off-on (and now apparently permanently off) relationship with supermodel Kate Moss, he's more famous for his seemingly uncontrollable drugtaking and resulting court appearances than he is for his musicianship.