Book excerpt: The paperback edition of a very successful and in some ways remarkable book, first published in 1973. Gerald Brenan is well known for his 'expository' works on Spanish history and literature, and now in his eighties he has returned to an early interest in the Spanish mystics to produce an absorbing study of St John of the Cross, one of the foremost of Catholic mystics and poets. The book is perhaps the first in English to combine an objective - but sensitive and lively - account of St John's life with a fresh translation (by Mr Brenan's associate Lynda Nicholson) of his verse.