Marvellous richly detailed and extraordinarily poignant David Robson, Sunday Telegraph



Set in Britain during the 1950s, this moving and evocative novel follows the intertwined fates of people crossing boundaries in their lives from growing older to growing up, from first love to leaving home. Vividly conveying the spirit of the mid-century and the profound social changes taking place at the time, this is an enthralling successor to the award-winning The Soldier s Return and A Son of War.



Bragg brilliantly conveys Joe s youthful idealism and the ultimate dislocation from family and community that will be experienced by the working-class lad (or lass) who manages to win a university education I, frankly, can t wait to read what happens next.

Val Hennessy, Daily Mail



If you want to know what Labour England after 1945 was really like, I cannot recommend [it] too highly His three novels on the subject put even the historians in the shade. Michael Foot, Guardian



Sharp yet tender, it is an astonishingly confident, slowly unreeled account

Rosemary Goring, Glasgow Herald