A01=Melvyn Bragg
Author_Melvyn Bragg
bailey's women's prize
bailey’s women’s prize
book of the year
Category=FBA
compelling
costa novel winner
eq_bestseller
eq_fiction
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_modern-contemporary
eq_nobargain
insightful
literary fiction
longlist
man booker prize
modern classics
moving
northern England
original
powerful
Pulitzer prize
shortlist
thought-provoking
trilogies
Product details
- ISBN 9780340770900
- Weight: 170g
- Dimensions: 128 x 196mm
- Publication Date: 06 Dec 2001
- Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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BOOK ONE IN THE CUMBRIAN TRILOGY
'An intensely moving, deeply worked book'
Sunday Telegraph
'Extraordinary'
The Times
Set in Cumbria and covering the period from 1898 to the early twenties, this is the powerful saga of John Tallentire, first farm labourer, then coal miner, and his wife Emily. John's struggle to break free from the humiliating status of a 'hired man' is the theme of a novel which has been hailed as a classic of its kind - as meticulously detailed as a social document, as evocative as the writings of Hardy and Lawrence.
Melvyn Bragg was born in Wigton, Cumbria, in 1939. He went to the local Grammar School and then to Wadham College, Oxford. He joined the BBC in 1961, and published his first novel, For Want of a Nail, in 1965.
He left the BBC and continued to write novels which include The Soldier's Return (WH Smith Literary Award), Without a City Wall (Mail on Sunday John Llewellyn Rhys Prize) and Now Is the Time (Parliamentary Book Award 2016). A Place in England, Son of War and Crossing the Lines were all nominated for the Booker Prize. His non-fiction includes The Adventure of English and The Book of Books, and his first memoir, Back in the Day, was published in 2022 to critical acclaim.
He edited and presented The South Bank Show from 1977 and hosted the BBC Radio 4 programme In Our Time from 1998. He has now retired from both. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society and of The British Academy. He was given a Peerage in 1998 and a Companion of Honour in 2017.
