Book description
Thomas Gage is a happy man. He has a fine house in Norfolk, two
delightful children, a wife who brought with her a nice income from
her father's paint firm, a Waterloo medal, and a painting on show at
the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. Then, a few months after Thomas
Gage's fiftieth birthday, Julius Gooby enters his life.
Mr Gooby is a man of the future, manager of the proposed North
Norfolk Railway from Norwich to Cromer, and the route of the railway
crosses Gage's land. With the railway comes tragedy, and Thomas Gage's
life begins to unravel until, at the end, medal on his chest, he
travels to London to watch the Duke of Wellington's funeral and to
take his revenge.
With Thomas Gage James Fleming has fashioned another
historical fiction of the very first rank, a portrait of a good man
undone by grief, by others' greed and, ultimately, by progress.
James Fleming, the nephew of Ian Fleming, was born in London in
1944. He is the author of four previous novels, all of them good:
The Temple of Optimism, White Blood, Cold Blood and
Rising Blood. He writes in Scotland.
Visit him online at www. jamesfleming. com
