As daughter of the Dean of Trinity College, Joanna Cannan was uniquely well-placed to write this book. It is her finest novel a sympathetic study of character, and a candid and searching account of Oxford academic life in the early part of the century. In the years leading up to the First World War, Theodore Fletcher achieves a lifetime's ambition and is elected to the Wardenship of St Mary's College. But it isn't long before he discovers that he was a compromise candidate and, in reality, is despised by his fellows. Me begins to see his life as an uneventful and trivial succession of failures. What he doesn't suspect is that this is soon to change in a most alarming and regrettable way. 'A plot of extraordinary delicacy, pathos, and irony. It is rare indeed to find a tale, so ruthless in its probing of shame and grief, at the same time so sure in its grasp of significance and beauty.' Observer 'A novel of uncommon qualities. Miss Cannan has sympathy and insight, she can hit hard, she can be witty, she has a fine gift of phrase.' Spectator