Books: On the High Tides of History - Derek Walcott: A Caribbean Life by Bruce King Oxford University Press, Pounds 30, 713pp ; All the Nobel Laureate's Poetry Rises from the Warm, Troubled Waters of His Native Sea. by David Dabydeen

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One day the Caribbean will get its act together and set up a Derek Walcott Library, properly funded, to gather together this great writer's manuscripts, letters and publications, as well as the hundreds of articles and books on his work. In the meantime, we must be immensely grateful for Bruce King's biography, for its patient and meticulous recording of archival material, sources of written data and oral testimonies from Walcott's family, friends and fellow- shipmates in the craft.

His book is not sensational biography. King only hints at Walcott's complex and anguished relationship to drink, women and literary rivals, focusing instead on the intellectual and …