An enchanting love story and a portrayal of innocence brutally curtailed

'Brilliant'
Daily Telegraph

'The book is exciting . . . a pleasure to be remembered'
Financial Times

At once a love story and a portrayal of innocence brutally curtailed, Josh Lawton charts the rites of passage of a young Cumbrian farm worker and keen fell runner - an exceptionally good man whose very integrity proves his undoing.

'With this novel, Melvyn Bragg has established his place in English letters to the extent that his Cumbria is as potent a literary region as Hardy's Wessex, Lawrence's Midlands and Housman's Shropshire'
New Statesman

"Every scene is clear, every character immediately recognisable . . . brilliant" - Daily Telegraph

"The book is exciting . . . a pleasure to be remembered" - Financial Times

"It has the lilt and inevitability of an old ballad . . . [He] skilfully portrays the friendships and antagonisms in rural Cumberland, a territory he has staked out as his own" - The Times

"With this novel, Melvyn Bragg has established his place in English letters to the extent that his Cumbria is as potent a literary region as Hardy's Wessex, Lawrence's Midlands and Housman's Shropshire" - New Statesman

"Beautifully told . . .the story unfolds with admirable simplicity . . . even the most brutal and inarticulate characters somehow manage to engage our sympathies" - Spectator

"An effortless writer. He never strains for effect, simply achieves it" - Sunday Times

"Nothing is harder to convey in fiction than the idea of simple goodness without it appearing soppy or naïve. But Melvyn Bragg succeeds." - Evening Standard

"As he demonstrates yet again in Josh Lawton, Melvyn Bragg has a rare ability to communicate both happiness and goodness" - Sunday Telegraph

"[Bragg] is a poetic eye, a visionary of sorts." - Guardian

"The pleasure to be had from this book is that of feeling, without having been exposed to any lies or romantic evasions, that the world is perhaps a better place that one had thought" - Sunday Times

"A nearly perfect work of art. Within the confines of craggy Cumberland, Bragg brings to life a handful of people, exposes the violence and brutality of British rural life and does it with a skill and sincerity unmatched since D. H. Lawrence." - Newsday