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London, 2014. Hal Lancaster – twenty-two, gay, Catholic, chops lines of cocaine with his myWaitrose card – is the reluctant heir of his father Henry, the sixteenth Duke of Lancaster. Henry is half tyrant, half martyr, with an investment in his eldest son that has grown into an obsession. While Hal floats between internships and drinking sessions, Henry keeps him in check with passive-aggression, religious guilt, and a cruelty that Hal sometimes confuses for tenderness.
When a grouse shooting accident – funny in retrospect – makes a romance out of Hal's rivalry with fumblingly leftist family friend Harry Percy, Hal finds that he wants, for the first time, a life of his own. But his father Henry is an Englishman: he will not let his son escape tradition. To save himself, Hal must reckon not only with grief and shame but with the wounds of his family's past.
*2025 Lammy Award Finalist*
'One of the most exciting new novels' FINANCIAL TIMES
'Very funny... Its deeply felt pages flew by' GUARDIAN
'Sexy, compassionate, uncommonly imaginative: I've never read anything quite like it' Oisín McKenna, author of Evenings and Weekends
'Deeply enjoyable' Julia Armfield, author of Our Wives Under the Sea
'Thrillingly imaginative' Kaliane Bradley, author of The Ministry of Time
©2024 Allen Bratton (P)2024 Penguin Audio