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Born in 1956, Tim Pears grew up in Devon, left school at sixteen and had countless menial jobs before studying at the National Film and Television School. He is the author of six previous novels, including In the Place of Fallen Leaves, which won the Hawthornden Prize and the Ruth Hadden Memorial Award, In a Land of Plenty, which was made into a ten part drama series for the BBC, and, most recently, Landed. He has been Writer in Residence at Cheltenham Festival of Literature, and Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Oxford Brookes University, and has taught creative writing at Ruskin College and elsewhere. He lives in Oxford with his wife and children.
Author photo © Rory Carnegie
An extraordinary feat of storytelling, the three novels that make up the West Country Trilogy will take readers on a journey from the agricultural world at the turn of the century, through to the devastation and upheaval of the First World War – an event that will transform not only the lives of Lottie and Leo, but also the fate of a nation. Lovereading comment to follow soon.
This begins The West Country Trilogy starting in 1911. It follows two years in the life of young Leo as he skips school as often as he can to help his father, brothers and cousin on one of the six farms on Lord Grenvil’s land. This is the time of the horse, long before tractors. Young Leo, although encountering pigs and cattle, is very much the horseman of the title and as he learns so, too, do we. In fact early on nearly four pages are devoted to the art of grooming. There are long sections on ploughing and horse maintenance, farming and shooting, all slow, detailed and full of country lore. At its centre is the social difference of two children who become friends through the love of horses, a friendship that is sadly misinterpreted. This is elegant, evocative prose with the change of seasons flowing gently through a tale spotted with tragedy and drama. ~ Sarah Broadhurst
Both a war novel of the first order and a love story of devastating power, In the Light of Morning is a magnificent new work by one of Britain's finest writers, Tim Pears, the highly acclaimed author of Disputed Land and Landed. It is May 1944 and in Eastern Europe the Second World War is reaching a dramatic and bloody crescendo. High above the mountains of occupied Slovenia an aeroplane drops three British parachutists - brash MP Major Jack Farwell, radio operator Sid Dixon, and young academic Lieutenant Tom Freedman - sent to assist the resistance in their battle against the Axis forces. Greeted upon arrival by a rag-tag group of Partisans, the men are led off into the countryside. It is early summer, and the mountains and forests teem with life and colour. Despite the distant crackle of gunfire, the war feels a long way off for Tom. The Partisans, too, are not what he was expecting - courageous, kind, and alluring, especially Jovan, their commander, and the hauntingly beautiful Marija. Yet after a series of daring encounters, the enemy's net begins to tighten. They find evidence of massacres, of a dark and terrible band of men pursuing them through the wilderness. As the Partisans stumble their way towards a final, tragic battle, so the relationships within the group begin to fray, with Tom finding himself forced to face up to his deepest, most secret desires.
It is May 1944 and in Eastern Europe the Second World War is reaching a dramatic and bloody crescendo. High above the mountains of occupied Slovenia an aeroplane drops three British parachutists - brash MP Major Jack Farwell, radio operator Sid Dixon, and young academic Lieutenant Tom Freedman - sent to assist the resistance in their battle against the Axis forces. Greeted upon arrival by a rag-tag group of Partisans, the men are led off into the countryside. It is early summer, and the mountains and forests teem with life and colour. Despite the distant crackle of gunfire, the war feels a long way off for Tom. The Partisans, too, are not what he was expecting - courageous, kind, and alluring, especially Jovan, their commander, and the hauntingly beautiful Marija. Yet after a series of daring encounters, the enemy's net begins to tighten. They find evidence of massacres, of a dark and terrible band of men pursuing them through the wilderness. As the Partisans stumble their way towards a final, tragic battle, so the relationships within the group begin to fray, with Tom finding himself forced to face up to his deepest, most secret desires.
Leonard and Rosemary Cannon summon their middle-aged offspring, along with partners and children, to the family home in the Welsh Marches for the Christmas holiday. As the gathered family settle in to their first Christmas together for some years, the grown siblings - Rodney, Johnny and Gwen. Judging Panel Fiction Uncovered 2011: ‘As the Cannons gather in the Welsh marshes for Christmas, young Theo is initiated into the politics of family. Pears is an author whose impressive body of work should be much more widely appreciated.’
A stirring, exquisitely rendered tale of homecoming; the final instalment in Tim Pears's epic West Country Trilogy It is 1916. The world has gone to war, and young Leo Sercombe, hauling coal aboard the HMS Queen Mary, is a long way from home. The wild, unchanging West Country roads of his boyhood seem very far away from life aboard a battlecruiser, a universe of well-oiled steel, of smoke and spray and sweat, where death seems never more than a heartbeat away. Skimming through those West Country roads on her motorcycle, Lottie Prideaux defies the expectations of her class and sex as she covertly studies to be a vet. But the steady rhythms of Lottie's practice, her comings and goings between her neighbours and their animals, will be blown apart by a violent act of betrayal, and a devastating loss. In a world torn asunder by war, everything dances in flux: how can the old ways life survive, and how can the future be imagined, in the face of such unimaginable change? How can Leo, lost and wandering in the strange and brave new world, ever hope to find his way home? The final instalment in Tim Pears's exquisite West Country Trilogy, The Redeemed is a timeless, stirring and exquisitely wrought story of love, loss and destiny fulfilled, and a bittersweet elegy to a lost world.
The final instalment in Tim Pears's spellbinding chronicle of love, exile and belonging in a world on the brink of change It is 1916. The world has gone to war, and young Leo Sercombe, hauling coal aboard the HMS Queen Mary, is a long way from home. The wild, unchanging West Country roads of his boyhood seem very far away from life aboard a battlecruiser, a universe of well-oiled steel, of smoke and spray and sweat, where death seems never more than a heartbeat away. Skimming through those West Country roads on her motorcycle, Lottie Prideaux defies the expectations of her class and sex as she covertly studies to be a vet. But the steady rhythms of Lottie's practice, her comings and goings between her neighbours and their animals, will be blown apart by a violent act of betrayal, and a devastating loss. In a world torn asunder by war, everything dances in flux: how can the old ways life survive, and how can the future be imagined, in the face of such unimaginable change? How can Leo, lost and wandering in the strange and brave new world, ever hope to find his way home? The final instalment in Tim Pears's exquisite West Country Trilogy, The Redeemed is a timeless, stirring and exquisitely wrought story of love, loss and destiny fulfilled, and a bittersweet elegy to a lost world.
The beautiful, questing second novel in Tim Pears' acclaimed West Country trilogy. Two teenagers, bound by love yet divided by fate, forge separate paths in pre-First World War Devon and Cornwall Lonely and grieving for her exiled best friend, thirteen-year-old Lottie feels a prisoner. Her only solace is her study of the natural world around her father's estate: the strange profusion of its plants, the beauty and brutality of its predators, its mysterious dances of life, death and survival. Grazing on berries and sleeping in copses, Leo travels alone through the wild, strange tapestry of the West Country towards Penzance. But a wanderer is never alone for long - and when the gypsy waggons rattle into view, Leo is drawn into a colourful and dangerous world far beyond his imagination.
An extraordinary feat of storytelling, the three novels that make up the West Country Trilogy will take readers on a journey from the agricultural world at the turn of the century, through to the devastation and upheaval of the First World War – an event that will transform not only the lives of Lottie and Leo, but also the fate of a nation. Lovereading comment to follow soon.
This begins The West Country Trilogy starting in 1911. It follows two years in the life of young Leo as he skips school as often as he can to help his father, brothers and cousin on one of the six farms on Lord Grenvil’s land. This is the time of the horse, long before tractors. Young Leo, although encountering pigs and cattle, is very much the horseman of the title and as he learns so, too, do we. In fact early on nearly four pages are devoted to the art of grooming. There are long sections on ploughing and horse maintenance, farming and shooting, all slow, detailed and full of country lore. At its centre is the social difference of two children who become friends through the love of horses, a friendship that is sadly misinterpreted. This is elegant, evocative prose with the change of seasons flowing gently through a tale spotted with tragedy and drama. ~ Sarah Broadhurst
WINNER OF THE HAWTHORNDEN PRIZE AND THE RUTH HADDEN MEMORIAL AWARD Tim Pears' prize-winning, critically acclaimed debut about a hot summer in a Devon village where time seems to stand still This overwhelmingly hot summer everything seems to be slowing down in the tiny Devon village where Alison lives, as if the sun is pouring hot glue over it. `This idn't nothin',' says Alison's grandmother, recalling a drought when the earth swallowed lambs, and the summer after the war when people got electric shocks off each other. But Alison knows her grandmother's memory is lying: this is far worse. She feels that time has stopped just as she wants to enter the real world of adulthood. In fact, in the cruel heat of summer, time is creeping towards her, and closing in around the valley.
From the prize-winning author of In the Place of Fallen Leaves comes a beautiful, hypnotic pastoral novel reminiscent of Thomas Hardy, about an unexpected friendship between two children, set in Devon in 1911 1911. In a forgotten valley, on the Devon-Somerset border, the seasons unfold, marked only by the rituals of the farming calendar. Twelve-year-old Leopold Sercombe skips school to help his father, a carter. Skinny and pale, with eyes as dark as sloes, Leo dreams of a job on the Master's stud farm. As ploughs furrow the hard January fields, the Master's daughter, young Miss Charlotte, shocks the estate's tenants by wielding a gun at the annual shoot. Spring comes, Leo watches swallows build their nests, hedgerows thrum with life and days lengthen into summer. Leo is breaking a colt for his father when a boy dressed in a Homburg, breeches and riding boots appears. Peering under the stranger's hat, he discovers Charlotte.And so a friendship begins, bound by a deep love of horses, but divided by rigid social boundaries - boundaries that become increasingly difficult to navigate as they approach adolescence... Hallucinatory, beautiful and suffused with the magic of nature, this tale of an unlikely friendship and the loss of innocence builds with a hypnotic power. Evoking the realities of agricultural life with precise, poetic brushstrokes, Tim Pears has created a masterful, Hardyesque pastoral novel. The first in a dazzling new trilogy, The Horseman is his greatest achievement.
Both a war novel of the first order and a love story of devastating power, In the Light of Morning is a magnificent new work by one of Britain's finest writers, Tim Pears, the highly acclaimed author of Disputed Land and Landed. It is May 1944 and in Eastern Europe the Second World War is reaching a dramatic and bloody crescendo. High above the mountains of occupied Slovenia an aeroplane drops three British parachutists - brash MP Major Jack Farwell, radio operator Sid Dixon, and young academic Lieutenant Tom Freedman - sent to assist the resistance in their battle against the Axis forces. Greeted upon arrival by a rag-tag group of Partisans, the men are led off into the countryside. It is early summer, and the mountains and forests teem with life and colour. Despite the distant crackle of gunfire, the war feels a long way off for Tom. The Partisans, too, are not what he was expecting - courageous, kind, and alluring, especially Jovan, their commander, and the hauntingly beautiful Marija. Yet after a series of daring encounters, the enemy's net begins to tighten. They find evidence of massacres, of a dark and terrible band of men pursuing them through the wilderness. As the Partisans stumble their way towards a final, tragic battle, so the relationships within the group begin to fray, with Tom finding himself forced to face up to his deepest, most secret desires.
Leonard and Rosemary Cannon summon their middle-aged offspring, along with partners and children, to the family home in the Welsh Marches for the Christmas holiday. As the gathered family settle in to their first Christmas together for some years, the grown siblings - Rodney, Jonny and Gwen - are surprised when they are invited to each put stickers on the furniture and items they wish to inherit from their parents. Disputed Land is narrated by Leonard and Rosemary's thirteen-year-old grandson, Theo, who observes how from these innocent beginnings age-old fissures open up in the relationships of those around him. Looking back at this Christmas gathering from his own middle-age - a narrator at once nostalgic and naive - Theo Cannon remembers his imperious grandmother Rosemary, alpha-male uncle Jonny, abominable twin cousins Xan and Baz; he recalls his love for his grandfather Leonard and the burgeoning feelings for his cousin Holly. And he asks himself the question: if a single family cannot solve the problem of what it bequeaths to future generations, then what chance does a whole society have of leaving the world intact?
It begins at the stroke of midnight on the first day of 1997. As the year turns, a group of disparate individuals from different backgrounds, from all corners of the country, are about to embark on separate journeys which will converge over the course of the next twelve months: among them, Rebecca - mother-to-be, Sam - amnesiac, Roderick - Conservative MP, Jack - lorry driver, Martha - cat burglar, Ben - paraplegic child, Solo - his abandoned father. At the end of that year, their lives will have changed irrevocably, some for better, some for worse, but changed nonetheless. They cannot know what will happen to them, but there is an inevitability in their shared destiny that will prove impossible to withstand... A Revolution of the Sun tells the story of one momentous year through the eyes of the people who lived it. It is not only their stories, but also the anatomy of a nation in flux. Ambitious, powerful, irresistible, it is the work of a writer at the peak of his powers and once again demonstrates Pears to be a great contemporary novelist.
Brought up in the Anglo-Welsh borders by an affectionate but alcoholic and feckless mother, Owen Ithell's sense of self is rooted in his long, vivid visits to his grandparents' small farm in the hills. As an adult he moves to an English city where he builds a new life, working as a gardener. He meets Mel, they have children. He believes he has found happiness - and love - of a sort. But a tragic accident changes the course of his life and the lives of those he loves is changed forever. Owen is haunted by suicidal thoughts. In his despair, he resolves to reconnect with both his past and the natural world, and with his children he embarks on a long, fateful journey, walking to the Welsh borders of his childhood. Powerful, richly evocative and perfectly poised between the hope of redemption and the threat of irrevocable tragedy, Landedis Tim Pears' most assured and beguiling novel to date.
In a small town in the middle of England, the aftermath of the Second World War brings change. For ambitious industrialist Charles Freeman, it offers new opportunities and marriage to Mary. He buys the big house on the hill and nails his aspirations to the future. In quick succession, three sons and a daughter bring life to the big house and, with it, the seeds of family joy and tragedy. As the children grow and struggle with the hazards of adulthood, Charles' business expands in direct proportion to his girth and becomes a symbol of the town's fortunes as Britain claws its way back from the grey austerity of wartime Britain. As times change, so do the family's fortunes. Their stories create a generous epic, an extraordinarily rich and plangent hymn to the transformation of middle England over the past fifty years. At its heart is a diverse and persuasive cast of loveable and odious characters attempting to contend with the restrictions of their generation. This is the story of our lives.
Zwei Bruder, John und Greg, sind erfolgreiche Geschaftsleute. Sie haben den Gemusehandel ihres Vaters in ein groes Unternehmen verwandelt. Gemeinsam planen sie den nachsten Schritt, die genetische Veranderung der Produkte. Doch da gibt es Probleme: Bei Versuchen mit genetisch veranderten Kartoffeln im venezolanischen Dschungel sind einige der Testpersonen gestorben. John fragt sich, wie er seinem Bruder diese Nachricht beibringen soll. Wahrend er auf der Ringstrae um London mehrmals die Abfahrt zu seinem Buro mit Absicht verfehlt, lasst John sein Leben an sich voruberziehen.
Ezra and Sheena Pepin live in Oxford with their three children. Ezra has abandoned his calling as an anthropologist; Sheena has found hers running a travel company. They are like everyone else: overworked, worried about their children, trying to preserve their marriage. But when change comes knocking at the Pepins' door, the family will never be quite the same again. Perceptive and funny, Blenheim Orchard is both human drama at its most powerful and an acute portrait of the times we live in.
Early nineteenth-century France had Balzac, we have Tim Pears - The Times . For John, a potato isn't just a staple food, it's also something wondrous, the secret of his success and the key to the future. With his brother, Greg, he has turned his father's greengrocery business into Spudnik, Britain's largest dealer in potatoes. Now, he wants to change the world by introducing, through potatoes, edible vaccines: plants genetically modified to provide an edible alternative to injections. But as John spins round and round the ring road avoiding his turn off to work he has to figure out how to tell his brother that deep in the Venezuelan jungle, volunteers have died during the latest illegal trials. Deaths that they have to find some way to hide. Wake up is a book about our times, and how we are hurtling, almost silently, into a new age with implications that are unfathomable. Funny, fluent, and provocative it is a major new novel from one of our finest contemporary writers. Wake up is a book about our times, and how we are hurtling, almost silently, into a new age with implications that are unfathomable.
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