Book description
One August bank holiday, Ted Johnson wakes to a day of reckoning - with
his past in Cumberland, his present in London and his fantasies. An
inflamed nerve troubles his eye as he veers between elation and despair,
overwhelmed by the noise and bustle of the streets, unable to connect
even with a visiting girlfriend. Written in 1971, Melvyn Bragg's sixth
novel draws a remarkable portrait of a man's courageous fight to keep
his mental balance and regain a sense of identity amid the stress and
intoxication of modern city life. 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.
