Lewis Eliot, the diffident protagonist of the Strangers and Brothers sequence, retreats to the background in this absorbing study of his mentor, George Passant, a charismatic solicitor’s clerk.

In the years of economic depression between the wars, George – an idealistic radical bursting with notions of creating the world anew – gathers about him a group of young people who, restive and ambitious, trust him to emancipate them from the constraints of their provincial lives. But when his lofty aspirations become muddied with a need for money and desire for sexual freedom, his power over the group becomes a danger to them all.

Politics, people and the rapidly changing social landscape of inter-war Britain are narrated with Snow’s trademark subtlety and precision in this fascinating analysis of a god with feet of clay.

A meticulous study of the public issues and private problems of post-war Britain, C. P. Snow’s Strangers and Brothers sequence is a towering achievement that stands alongside Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time as one of the great romans-fleuves of the twentieth century.

"One of the best novels produced in England in my time" - Spectator

"Conducted with a sympathetic impartiality and a calm integrity of observation that are reflected in a style at once matter-of-fact and sensitively precise" - Sunday Times

"A remarkable book . . . the work of a man of wide intelligence and sympathy" - The Listener

"Together, the sequence presents a vivid portrait of British academic, political and public life. Snow was that rare thing, a scientist and novelist" - Jeffrey Archer, Guardian

"Balzacian masterpieces of the age" - Philip Hensher, Telegraph

"Through [the Strangers and Brothers sequence] as in no other work in our time we have explored the inner life of the new classless class that is the 20th century Establishment" - New York Times

"A very considerable achievement . . . It brings into the novel themes and locales never seen before (except perhaps in Trollope)." - Anthony Burgess