Book description
Disillusioned with his successful life in London, Richard Godwin moves
to a remote Cumberland village in search of a more fulfilling existence.
His arrival coincides with a birth of an illegitimate child to a local
woman, binding her to a future she had hoped to escape. As these two
outsiders struggle to come to terms with themselves - and each other -
their passion, desperation and delight draw all those around them into
conflict. 'A very good novel, simply about a man and a woman:
traditional in form - it has a beautiful arch-like structure - and
Lawrencian in tone' Melvyn Bragg's first novel, FOR WANT OF A NAIL,
was published in 1965 and since then his novels have included THE HIRED
MAN, for which he won the Time/Life Silver Pen Award, WITHOUT A CITY
WALL, winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, CREDO, THE MAID OF
BUTTERMERE and THE SOLDIER'S RETURN, which was published to huge
critical acclaim in 1999 and won the WHSmith Literary Award. He has also
written several works of non-fiction including SPEAK FOR ENGLAND, an
oral history of the twentieth century, RICH, a biography of Richard
Burton, ON GIANTS' SHOULDERS, a history of science based on his BBC
radio series, THE ADVENTURE OF ENGLISH, 12 BOOKS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD,
IN OUR TIME and THE SOUTH BANK SHOW: FINAL CUT. He was born in 1939 and
educated at Wigton's Nelson Thomlinson School and at Oxford where he
read history. He is President of the National Campaign for the Arts, and
in 1998 he was made a life peer. He won an Academy Fellowship at the
BAFTA Television Awards in 2010.
