By James Goss, illustrated by Russell T Davies

BBC Books, out September 28

It can’t be a coincidence that this pocket-sized book of poems is being released a fortnight before National Poetry Day, and if your previous exposure to the medium was Wordsworth and Tennyson, maybe now’s the time to read the ode less travelled.

Poetry and verse is, and should be, more than angsty repetition at one end of the scale, or dirty limericks at the other – There was a companion called Vicky… As you’d expect for a family brand, this collection of Time Lord verse sits very safely in the fun part of the spectrum, the title itself being a riff on A A Milne and E H Sheppard’s 1927 Now We Are Six, featuring poems about Winnie-the-Pooh, Piglet et al. Piglet himself makes an appearance in the bookends of Beforwards and Afterwards, but is now called Figment and lives in Thousand Year Wood, illustrated with a lovely line drawing by 9th and 10th Doctor showrunner Russell T Davies.

Author James Goss has taken a number of Milne’s popular verses and regenerated them into Doctor Who variants. Milne’s The End becomes a description of the first 12 Doctors, instead of the child’s first six years, Rice Pudding’s opening line ‘What is the matter with Mary Jane?’ now refers to Sarah Jane, and Jonathon Jo sensibly becomes Josephine Grant. In addition to the transposition of extant Milne verse into Doctor Who versions, Goss has also created some from the ground-up, taking the classic author’s style and adapting it for the Who-niverse. How else would we get Krotons, Macra, Yeti, Zaroff and Ann Travers in the same verse?

As a concept, this follows the same path as the Time Lord Fairy Tales, The Shakespeare Notebooks and Myths & Legends, where a classic, existing work is given a coat of Doctor Who varnish. If one of the positive outcomes is that readers are tempted to check out the originals or create their own verse then that would be a lovely response to this stealth form of literary education.

All of the verse is set ‘in universe’ apart from the post-script, Verity. “Why’s a sweet girl going near a sci-fi show?” scoff the men at the BBC. I doubt Goss knew the identity of the 13 Doctor when he wrote this, but what a great reminder that a female Time Lord was steering the TARDIS from the very beginning.

Not convinced yet? If you raise a smile at: “They’re changing guard at Rassilon’s Palace, Romanadvoratrlelundar went down with Alicia.” then your certainly on the same page as the author. Wisely he doesn’t try to incorporate Bannakaffalatta or Raxacoricofallapatorius into his compositions.

And if poetry is absolutely not your thing, marvel at Russell THE Davies’ foreground line sketches that accompany every verse. You can just imagine him chuckling as he doodles onto a serviette, back of fag packet or whatever, trilling ‘marvellous!’ In his booming voice. And they really are marvellous.

Verdict: Is it canon? Is it essential? You decide. It’s certainly clever and brimming with charm. And how lucky we are to have a brand that continues to thrive on the endless possibilities of the unlikeliest of treatments and tie-ins, and inspires artists and writers to come up with something so original. 8/10

Nick Joy