J. Berger, A fortunate man (1967)
K. Grahame, The Golden Age (1895)
E. Hemingway, The old man and the sea (1952
K. Lowe, The Fear and the Freedom: How the Second World War Changed Us (2017)
N. Mahfouz, Sugar Street
C. Mieville, This census taker (2016)
S.S. Tepper, A Plague of Angels (1993)C. Mieville, This census taker (2016)
T. Travers, London boroughs at fifty (2015)
S. Zweig, Triumph and Disaster: Five Historical Miniatures (1927 and 1940. New translation 2016)
The temptation to make this Grahame's wonderful evocation of childhood in the Edwardian age was almost overwhelming. And it is lovely, though it does repeat, and is ultimately slight. I'm also conscious that it was almost designed for me and yet didn't elicit the depth of response I would have expected. So I resisted, and instead I plumped for an account of a Comprehensive Headteacher in the 1980s. Middleton won the Booker a decade previously with Holiday which I thought was decent rather then excellent. This was better, and his understated prose I think deployed to best effect.
