A lifetime of restraint and placid affection erupts when a retired bank manager falls for a young girl, as far removed from him in background and experience as in age. Set in Cumbria, this is an intensely moving evocation of an overwhelming passion and its destructive kernel of jealousy.

'Magnetic...A major imaginative triumph' OBSERVER

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
The narrative of the obsession is told with great verve and conviction, from the first fortuitous encounter...to the open-ended conclusion * Penelope Lively, Evening Standard *
Vibrantly erotic...brave and searingly honest..compulsively gripping * Graham Lord, Sunday Times *
It is a sexy book. It is a romantic book. Its heart is the dream of great passion * Philippa Gregory, The Sunday Times *
The key to the success of the book is its simplicity and unpretentiousness...makes convincing the disorderly and unreasoning passion of the orderly and reasoning man * Rose Tremain, Listener *



Book Information
ISBN 9780340551196
Author Melvyn Bragg
Format Paperback
Page Count 208
Imprint Sceptre
Publisher Hodder & Stoughton
Weight(grams) 152g
Dimensions(mm) 198mm * 129mm * 15mm