Joseph Tallantire has hope and ambition - like his father before him he is determined to make something of himself and improve his lot. But life is not easy for an uneducated young man in Cumberland before and during World War II, and Joseph's struggle against the odds is the subject of this moving and evocative novel. Suffering hardship and humiliation but eventually achieving a position of some independence, Joseph serves as a tribute to the many like him who lived through one of Britain's periods of greatest social change.

The second novel in Melvyn Bragg's brilliant and evocative Tallentire trilogy

About the Author
Melvyn Bragg is a writer and broadcaster whose first novel, For Want of a Nail, was published in 1965. His novels since include The Maid of Buttermere, The Soldier's Return, A Son of War, Credo and Now is the Time, which won the Parliamentary Book Award for fiction in 2016. His books have also been awarded the Time/Life Silver Pen Award, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the WHSmith Literary Award, and have been longlisted three times for the Booker Prize (including the Lost Man Booker Prize). He has also written several works of non-fiction, including The Adventure of English and The Book of Books about the King James Bible. He lives in London and Cumbria.

Reviews
A graceful and confident writer; the little Cumberland town of Thurston during the slump years, the Second World War and after, is beautifully realised * The Observer *
Quite masterly * Daily Telegraph *
Places him solidly in the main tradition of English fiction, with an honourable ancestry through such disparate figures as Wells and Hardy, Dickens and Jane Austen to Henry Fielding * Tribune *



Book Information
ISBN 9780340770924
Author Melvyn Bragg
Format Paperback
Page Count 256
Imprint Sceptre
Publisher Hodder & Stoughton
Weight(grams) 180g
Dimensions(mm) 196mm * 128mm * 20mm