Book description
It's Derby Day and all of England is heading for the Epsom Downs.
Society beauties rub shoulders with Whitechapel street girls, as every
class of society gathers with high hopes and taut nerves for the
greatest race of the year.
All through winter, from London to France, plans have been laid,
money exchanged, disputes begun. And uniting the destinies of old Mr
Gresham and his tigerish daughter, the rakish Mr Happerton and his
crony Captain Raff, brooding Mr Davenant, Mr Pardew the burglar and
detective Captain McTurk is the champion horse Tiberius.
In this rich and exuberant novel, rife with the idioms of Victorian
England, the mysteries pile high, propelling us towards the day of the
great race, and we wait with bated breath as the story gallops to a
finish that no one expects.
Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2011.
D. J. Taylor was born in Norwich in 1960. He is a novelist, critic
and acclaimed biographer, whose biography of Thackeray was a
critically-acclaimed success and whose
Orwell: The Life
won the Whitbread Biography prize in 2003. His most recent books are
Kept: A Victorian Mystery
(a
Publishers Weekly
Book of the Year),
Bright Young People: The Rise and Fall of a
Generation 1918-1940
, and the novels
Ask Alice
and
At the Chime of a City Clock
.
