Crossing The Lines

LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE

THE THIRD NOVEL IN 'ONE OF THE MOST DISTINGUISHED LITERARY SERIES IN RECENT TIMES' (SUNDAY TELEGRAPH)

'An enormously important piece of literature'

Guardian

'Richly detailed and extraordinarily poignant'

Sunday Telegraph

'Expertly told . . . a continuation of a monumental series'

The Times

Set in Britain during the 1950s, this moving and evocative novel follows the intertwined fates of people crossing boundaries in their lives. As a teenager in the small northern town of Wigton, Joe Richardson falls in love with Rachel, just when her life is about to be uprooted. While his parents, Sam and Ellen, face the frontiers of middle age, Joe finds himself drawn by the intoxicating world outside home, and swept into situations that seem beyond his control.

Vividly conveying the spirit of the mid-century and the profound social changes taking place at the time, this is a masterly successor to the award-winning The Soldier's Return and A Son of War.

“'Richly detailed and extraordinarily poignant ... Melvyn Bragg is slowly cementing his place among the aristocrats of English fiction'”

'I was bowled over by it . . . an enormously important piece of literature about post-war Britain' [A.C. Grayling, Guardian]

'Enthralling, a joy to read' [Allan Massie, Scotsman]

'An expertly told tale which is satisfying in its own right and as a continuation of a monumental series.' [Frank Egerton, The Times]

'Richly detailed and extraordinarily poignant . . . Melvyn Bragg is slowly cementing his place among the aristocrats of English fiction' [David Robson, Sunday Telegraph]

Melvyn Bragg is a writer and broadcaster whose first novel, For Want of a Nail, was published in 1965. His novels since include The Maid of Buttermere, The Soldier's Return, A Son of War, Credo and Now is the Time, which won the Parliamentary Book Award for fiction in 2016. His books have also been awarded the Time/Life Silver Pen Award, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the WHSmith Literary Award, and have been longlisted three times for the Booker Prize (including the Lost Man Booker Prize).

He has also written several works of non-fiction, including The Adventure of English and The Book of Books about the King James Bible.

He lives in London and Cumbria.

Marvellous richly detailed and extraordinarily poignant David Robson, Sunday Telegraph Set in Britain during the 1950s, this moving and evocative novel follows the intertwined fates of people crossing boundaries in their lives from growing older to growing up, from first love to leaving home. Vividly conveying the spirit of the mid-century and the profound social changes taking place at the time, this is an enthralling successor to the award-winning The Soldier s Return and A Son of War. Bragg brilliantly conveys Joe s youthful idealism and the ultimate dislocation from family and community that will be experienced by the working-class lad (or lass) who manages to win a university education I, frankly, can t wait to read what happens next. Val Hennessy, Daily Mail If you want to know what Labour England after 1945 was really like, I cannot recommend [it] too highly His three novels on the subject put even the historians in the shade. Michael Foot, Guardian Sharp yet tender, it is an astonishingly confident, slowly unreeled account Rosemary Goring, Glasgow Herald

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