Highgate, London, 1824. Samuel Taylor Coleridge is a washed-up opium addict, estranged from his friends and from his neglected wife. His grip on reality is starting to slip; his past and present mingle in laudanum-induced dreams.

In a Cambridge college library, Scrivener, a bullied undergraduate, finds a strange annotation in a book of Coleridge's poems. Intrigued by this mystery marginalia and captivated by Romantic poetry, he resolves to become a poet himself, with Coleridge as his guiding light.

Across the sea, Samuele, a young Sicilian, discovers that his mother once had a liaison with Coleridge. He sets out for England to learn all he can about the man who may be his father.

It isn't long before Samuele and Scrivener cross paths--but will their journeys take them to the real Samuel Taylor Coleridge?

Dennis Hamley was born in Kent and moved to Winslow, Bucks. He attended the Royal Latin School in Buckingham (1946-1954), and then the RAF National Service. Dennis went on to have a career in education (teacher, lecturer) before retiring early in 1992 to write full-time. His first novel was published in 1974 and he has written over sixty books, many for children.

The idea for The Second Person from Porlock came from the discovery of a comment inserted in the text of Kubla Khan in the Old Library, Jesus College, Cambridge. Its provenance is still unknown.