In the gentle precinct of Aldminster Cathedral, crisis looms.
The urbane and worldly Dean wants nothing so much as to restore and beautify his beloved Cathedral - even if it means sacrificing the Choir School to pay for it.
Alexander Troy, Headmaster of the school, a conscientious man, is determined that nothing and no-one - certainly not the overbearing Dean - should destroy the Choir.
As the rift widens to take on immense dimensions, many others find themselves caught in the schism - Leo Beckford, brilliant but wayward organist, repelling the adoration of the Dean's dreadful daughter; the gentle, left-wing Bishop, trying to soothe the angry protagonists; Sally Ashworth, mother of the leading chorister, fighting loneliness and an erring and absent husband...
Each frail and human dilemma takes its part in the greater turmoil of Chapter and Close and the final battle for the survival of the Choir.
Joanna Trollope is the author of eagerly awaited and sparklingly readable novels often centred around the domestic nuaunces and dilemmas of life in present-day England. She has also written a number of historical novels and Britannia's Daughters, a study of women in the British Empire. In 1988 she wrote her first contemporary novel, The Choir, and this was followed by A Village Affair, A Passionate Man, The Rector's Wife, The Men and the Girls, A Spanish Lover, The Best of Friends, Next of Kin, Other People's Children, Marrying the Mistress, Girl from the South, Brother & Sister and Second Honeymoon.
Joanna Trollope was born in Gloucestershire and lives in London. She was appointed OBE in the 1996 Queen's Birthday Honours List for services to literature.