In PETER SOMERVILLE-LARGE’s elegant and scathingly witty novel, Paul Blake-Willoughby, the only child of a mixed marriage, is brought up on an Irish country estate by a Catholic soldier father and an eccentric Protestant mother. Against the backdrop of a large crumbling mansion, various factions, which include his Protestant teachers, a wealthy Church of Ireland Bishop and a succession of Catholic priests, war hilariously over his soul. It is a brilliant and extremely funny examination of the topics of snobbery, bigotry and infidelity. The end of the novel is a cruel surprise, reflecting a lifetime of unresolved problems.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY:

Peter Somerville-Large was born in Dublin in 1928. An early job in Afghanistan was followed by a spell of travel in Asia during the early 1950s which resulted in travel books on Yemen, Iran and Afghanistan. His books include The Coast of West Cork, The Grand Irish Tour, Cappaghglass, short-listed for the Christopher Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize, To the Navel of the World, describing a journey to Western Tibet and his latest, The History of the National Gallery of Ireland. He has also written four thrillers. He lives in County Kilkenny with his wife Gillian.

‘A splendid book, which I greatly enjoyed, page after page.’ WILLIAM TREVOR

‘Wonderfully evocative detail, smoothly paced, very funny – right up there with William Trevor and Molly Keane in the same Decline and Fall of the Ascendancy genre’
JOSEPH HONE

‘Outrageous jokes, very elegantly written very funny’
ALANNAH HOPKIN