Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and a Richard & Judy Book Club choice, this accessible and profound novel is now published in paperback. Centring on a Victorian }cause celebre{ Barnes brings the period, the case and the inner lives of the two main characters vividly to life. 'This novel is Barnes at his best' }Times Arthur and George grow up worlds apart in late nineteenth-century Britain: Arthur in shabby-genteel Edinburgh, George in the vicarage of Staffordshire village. Arthur is to become one of the most famous men of his age, while George remains in hard-working obscurity. But as the new century begins, they are brought together by a sequence of events.
