Crystal Rooms

Description

Young Harry, an orphan from an impoverished council estate, becomes the link between starkly contrasting worlds: north and south, the deprived and the over-privileged, the powerful and the defenceless. With this compelling story of blackmail, media politics, corrupted innocence and redemptive love, Melvyn Bragg delivers an unforgettable portrait of modern life.

Melvyn Bragg's first novel, FOR WANT OF A NAIL, was published in 1965 and since then his novels have included THE HIRED MAN, for which he won the Time/Life Silver Pen Award, WITHOUT A CITY WALL, winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, THE SOLDIER'S RETURN, which won the WHSmith Literary Award, and A SON OF WAR and CROSSING THE LINES, both of which were longlisted for the Booker Prize, and his most recent novel REMEMBER ME... He has also written several works of non-fiction including THE ADVENTURE OF ENGLISH and 12 BOOKS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD.

A splendid Dickensian sweep of a book - Observer A decent and intelligent novel, one which can be read, and will be read, with a great deal of pleasure - Allan Massie, Scotsman As a guide to media London, the novel is essential reading - T.J. Binyon, Times Literary Supplement The very good Bragg has forced a complex contemporary plot to work magic - David Hughes, Mail on Sunday Bragg has scarcely ever written better...A state of England message transfused by fiction - Tom Adair, Scotland on Sunday Melvyn Bragg writes with a lyrical nostalgia which is as important to the novel as his energy - Penelope Fitzgerald, Evening Standard