Andrew Hawthorne?s second collection, 'They Become their Shadows', begins with the sequence, ?The Fall of Maiden Castle?, where local ancient Britons made their last stand against the Romans. They remain present in the Dorset landscape, their ?voices mere whispers in the wind-blown grass?.Many others also ?become their shadows? and a whole range of characters, evoked with the author?s characteristic sharp realism and surreal humour, haunt the mundane contemporary settings of a seaside town and ?The Cafe on the Side of Life?. More personal poems evoke loss and moments of happiness. The collection as a whole gives a strong sense of a pressing, thick-textured, difficult life, in which all sorts of other people, even from far back in the past, cast long shadows.