TONY Harrison is a giant among wordsmiths, no less.

Watching him is eyeing a great master at work.

"I did not want the poet laureate job - not at any price," he firmly tells the Wordsworth Trust audience at the Thistle Hotel.

During his 60-minute reading he related vivid tales of Bosnia, as poet-on-duty for the Guardian newspaper.

His reaction to ethnic cleansing and retreating Serbs.

Auroras was about a fragrant pen given to him by a dying friend.

Another was Doncaster, based on the three years it took to make his epic film.

And Mouthfuls - the tale of a baker in Greece and the ghost of Tony's father's taste buds.

Tony Harrison wasn't quite what I'd expected: so what vision did I conjure up of the controversial Yorkshireman?

I'll tell you what I didn't expect: such a warm, very funny, thoughtful and honest, caring, razor-sharp, brilliant man, whose every word the audience clung onto as though hanging from a crumbling ledge with only a 100-feet of fresh air between them and the ground below.