WHILE I might initially have had some misgivings about reviewing a book made up entirely of book reviews, by a few chapters into Militants, Artists and Poets I was quickly convinced that this was going to be an enjoyable and often thought-provoking read, not least in signposting new and original books I hadn’t already encountered.

Clear and relaxed, Burns’s almost effortless style of writing  enthusiastically explores a kaleidoscopic range of materials and manages to do so in an fashion that is fair, balanced and thoroughly objective.

A key attraction of this collection is that it generates interest in the most unlikely and often sadly marginalised of [[{"fid":"23550","view_mode":"inlineright","fields":{"format":"inlineright","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false},"link_text":null,"type":"media","field_deltas":{"1":{"format":"inlineright","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false}},"attributes":{"class":"media-element file-inlineright","data-delta":"1"}}]]fields. The author’s deep and ongoing interest in looking at the work of the American Beat writers, for example, doesn’t stop him from covering similar figures in Britain during the same period.

Although more bohemian than Bolshevik, Burns refuses to  celebrate art for art’s sake. He’s aware of the primacy of sociohistorical context and is often keen to examine art and its  ongoing relationship to left radicalism as is evidenced in reviews dealing with the Popular Front novels of the 1930s and the later role of the CIA in engineering cultural shifts during the cold war.

Finally, Burns anchors his writings in geography, with essays covering developments in St Ives, Whitechapel, Manchester and Moscow demonstrating the importance of place.

Lively, opinionated and part of a body of work that now runs into volumes, Burns celebrates a world of independent bookshops and small countercultural publishers that has sadly disappeared at the time of writing.

Fingers crossed that a rediscovery of their value will one day lead to their re-emergence.

Published by Penniless Press Publications, £9.99.