‘My favourite novel and one I wish I’d written.’ ALAN BENNETTWinner of the McKitterick Prize for best first novel by an author aged over 40, and the Hawthornden Prize for imaginative literature.

Everyone craves retirement from the Civil Service, don’t they? That time for an ageing patriarch to enjoy the fruits of a well-earned pension and the respect of his family; maybe even to indulge in a love of music halls and metropolitan life. If only people would listen and do as they were told…

His fourth son William, the long-suffering narrator, is the constant butt of his father’s jokes and victim of his brothers’ indifference. But as death, divorce and other darker dramas follow, father and son slowly establish a strange harmony.