Highly respected and widely honoured, Tony Harrison nevertheless stands somewhat outside the poetry establishment because of the political nature of some of his work, his writing for the theatre and television, and his strong rootedness in the north-east. He is a librettist and verse-dramatist whose very successful cycle of English Medieval Mystery Plays was first performed at the National Theatre in 1985. His SELECTED POEMS first appeared in Penguin in 1984. It was revised in 1987 to include 'V.', his famous long poem about the vandalism of a Leeds graveyard which won him a Royal Television Society Award. It has been in print in Penguin continuously for twenty years. His work also featured in the second series of Penguin Modern Poets in the mid 1990s.