The second novel in Melvyn Bragg's brilliant and evocative Tallentire trilogy

Joseph Tallantire has hope and ambition - like his father before him he is determined to make something of himself and improve his lot. But life is not easy for an uneducated young man in Cumberland before and during World War II, and Joseph's struggle against the odds is the subject of this moving and evocative novel. Suffering hardship and humiliation but eventually achieving a position of some independence, Joseph serves as a tribute to the many like him who lived through one of Britain's periods of greatest social change.

"A graceful and confident writer; the little Cumberland town of Thurston during the slump years, the Second World War and after, is beautifully realised" - The Observer

"Quite masterly" - Daily Telegraph

"Places him solidly in the main tradition of English fiction, with an honourable ancestry through such disparate figures as Wells and Hardy, Dickens and Jane Austen to Henry Fielding" - Tribune