Book description
Growing up in an isolated cottage in the hills of Cumberland, Tom knows
the bitter cold of shooting expeditions with his grandfather and long
evenings spent with his father and mother. But taken away from the hills
to live in the small town of Thornton, Tom experiences a tumult of
conflicting emotions which he must master before he can come to terms
with his identity. 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.
