About this ebook
Sunday Times
'Bragg has a very sure touch with his characters: they live'
Anthony Burgess, author of A Clockwork Orange
In the shadow of Hadrian's Wall, two young men chafe at the constraints of rural life and yearn to break free from the courses set for them: John Foster, driven hard by his tyrannical, ambitious father on their tenant farm, and Arthur Langley, reluctant inheritor of his father's waning estate. Though class has long kept their neighbouring families apart, the pair form an intense friendship - until John makes the mistake of falling for Arthur's mercurial sister.
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About the author
Melvyn Bragg was born in Wigton, Cumbria, in 1939. He went to the local Grammar School and then to Wadham College, Oxford. He joined the BBC in 1961, and published his first novel, For Want of a Nail, in 1965. He left the BBC and continued to write novels which include The Soldier's Return (WH Smith Literary Award), Without a City Wall (Mail on Sunday John Llewellyn Rhys Prize) and Now Is the Time (Parliamentary Book Award 2016). A Place in England, Son of War and Crossing the Lines were all nominated for the Booker Prize. His non-fiction includes The Adventure of English and The Book of Books, and his first memoir, Back in the Day, was published in 2022 to critical acclaim. He edited and presented The South Bank Show from 1977 and hosted the BBC Radio 4 programme In Our Time from 1998. He has now retired from both. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society and of The British Academy. He was given a Peerage in 1998 and a Companion of Honour in 2017.
