The clever and compelling tale of a war-scarred journalist caught in the lives of a country rebuilding itself from one of the greatest chroniclers of our times, Kate Atkinson.
It’s the summer of 1951 and everyone is looking to put the dark days of the war behind them. The government’s solution: The Festival of Britain, a celebration of the country’s creativity, grit and ingenuity.
For foreign correspondent turned war reporter Harry Flynn, it might offer the chance of redemption after a bad war in the Far East and a peace that is proving no easier to negotiate. Having failed to resume his journalistic career, he reluctantly joins an oddball team of misfits, ne’er-do-wells and downright chancers helping to ready the Festival of Britain for launch. Flynn’s attempts to resume some semblance of a romantic life also founder when one of his dates goes missing and he is deemed to be the last person to have seen her alive.
Could he have been in some way responsible for her disappearance?Little does he realize that the answer to some of his mounting problems may lie in the hands of a precocious, straight-talking thirteen-year-old called Veronica and a rather scruffy terrier who goes by the name of Mrs Betty…
'An author who never lets you down' Reader's Digest
'Atkinson is a novelist of unrivalled immediacy, authority, and skill' Financial Times
'Kate Atkinson is simply one of the best writers working today' Gillian Flynn, global bestselling author of Gone Girl
Our bookseller says:
'Kate Atkinson is a writer who never misses, and finds those pockets of British history that seem anodyne and unremarkable and brings them to life in gleaming technicolour. What seems on the surface to be a story about the people organising the Festival of Britain soon morphs into something much weirder and murkier; characters that wouldn't seem out of place in the rookeries of Dickens' London, and at times an Kafka-esque descent into the shadowy world of early Cold War politics. Buy it and read it, you won't be sorry you did.'