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
original
powerful
Pulitzer prize
shortlist
thought-provoking
Product details
- ISBN 9780340770924
- Weight: 180g
- Dimensions: 128 x 196mm
- Publication Date: 06 Dec 2001
- Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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BOOK TWO IN THE CUMBRIAN TRILOGY
'Masterly'
Daily Telegraph
'A graceful and confident writer'
Observer
'Joseph Tallantire has hope and ambition - like his father before him he is determined to make something of himself and improve his lot. But life is not easy for an uneducated young man in Cumberland before and during World War II, and Joseph's struggle against the odds is the subject of this moving and evocative novel. Suffering hardship and humiliation but eventually achieving a position of some independence, Joseph serves as a tribute to the many like him who lived through one of Britain's periods of greatest social change.
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.
