‘The effect of the book is massive . . . loving, deep and perceptive’
Sunday Times
‘Bragg has a very sure touch with his characters: they live’
Anthony Burgess, author of A Clockwork Orange
In the shadow of Hadrian’s Wall, two young men chafe at the constraints of rural life and yearn to break free from the courses set for them: John Foster, driven hard by his tyrannical, ambitious father on their tenant farm, and Arthur Langley, reluctant inheritor of his father’s waning estate. Though class has long kept their neighbouring families apart, the pair form an intense friendship – until John makes the mistake of falling for Arthur’s mercurial sister.
Sunday Times
‘Bragg has a very sure touch with his characters: they live’
Anthony Burgess, author of A Clockwork Orange
In the shadow of Hadrian’s Wall, two young men chafe at the constraints of rural life and yearn to break free from the courses set for them: John Foster, driven hard by his tyrannical, ambitious father on their tenant farm, and Arthur Langley, reluctant inheritor of his father’s waning estate. Though class has long kept their neighbouring families apart, the pair form an intense friendship – until John makes the mistake of falling for Arthur’s mercurial sister.
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Reviews
There is no question of promise about him. He has arrived. His talent is formidable and is planted, I am convinced, in a deep earth from which he will draw even greater riches. The effect of the book is massive. Characterisations are loving, deep and perceptive.
This is a novel which has something to say and which says it well and truthfully.
Melvyn Bragg has created a world from his imagination which is highly charged and shot through with beauties which can reasonably be called poetic.
A deep moody masterpiece of atmosphere and character
Bragg has a very sure touch with his characters: they live'