Melvyn Bragg

Set in Britain during the 1950s, this moving and evocative novel follows the intertwined fates of people crossing boundaries in their lives. As a teenager in the small northern town of Wigton, Joe Richardson falls in love with Rachel, just when her life is about to be uprooted. While his parents, Sam and Ellen, face the frontiers of middle age, Joe finds himself drawn by the intoxicating world outside home, and swept into situations that seem beyond his control. Vividly conveying the spirit of the mid-century and the profound social changes taking place at the time, this is a masterly successor to the award-winning THE SOLDIER'S RETURN

'Melvyn Bragg has added another formidable chapter to one of the most distinguished literary series of recent times' David Robson, Sunday Telegraph It was not love at first sight. It proved to be not much of a conversation!Nothing should have come of it. A passionate but ultimately tragic love affair starts when two students - one French, one English - meet at university at the beginning of the sixties. From its tentative early stages, the relationship develops into a life-changing one, whose profound impact continues to reverberate forty years later.