A heftier collection than most of the Press's poetry books by poet and mathematician, Barrington Gates, who is best known for his poems about airplanes, which were also the subject of his scientific and historical interest. He was also a reviewer for the TLS and a member of the Royal Society. A biography by H. B. M. Thomas survives in a collected volume of Biographical Memoirs of Royal Society members, which was published in 1974.