ABOUT
THE BOOK

In a small town in England, in the aftermath of the Second World War, industrialist Charles Freeman buys the big house on the hill for himself and his wife Mary. In quick succession, three sons and a daughter bring life to the house and with it the seeds of joy and tragedy. As the children grow up, Charles’s business expands in direct proportion to his girth and becomes synonymous with the town’s prosperity as Britain claws its way back from the years of grey austerity. As times changes, so do their fortunes, for better and for worse, ebbing and flowing with the years. Tim Pears was born in 1956 and has worked in a variety of jobs. His first novel, In the Place of Fallen Leaves, won the Hawthornden Prize for Literature. He lives in Oxford.