The Soldier's Return - Couverture souple

Paradoxically, one of this era's most ubiquitous media voices writes with tremendous empathy about the vanished culture of least said, soonest mended ... one of the tautest and fiercest of Bragg's fictions, alongside FOR WANT OF A NAIL, THE HIRED MAN and THE MAID OF BUTTERMERE.' (Independent)

Reads like Lawrence without the lunacy and stodginess. It packs an emotional punch that will even have cynics sobbing by the last page. All of us hanker after unconditional love, the memory of our father's arms around us. THE SOLDIER'S RETURN feels like the book Bragg was born to write (Time Out)

Sympathetic, touching, infinitely believable...this is a highly accomplished novel (Literary Review)

Strong, straightforward, explicit, evocative ... a very good novel ... It is common to compare Bragg to Hardy, Lawrence and Housman as a novelist of place, but more than anyone he reminds me of JB Priestley. He has the same much underrated strengths (Daily Telegraph)

Bragg recaptures a place and society utterly lost to us today...A great achievement... THE SOLDIER'S RETURN is about the turmoil of those who, while fully aware of what is going on inside themselves, remain inariculate not because they are unaware of their thoughts and feelings, but out of stoicism and self-respect - out of an inborn triat which they perversely foster, on the assumption that this approach to life will cause less suffering in the end. It is a good subject for a novelist to explore, and Melvyn Bragg does it most impressively (Guardian)

When Sam Richardson returns in 1946 from the 'Forgotten War' in Burma to Wigton in Cumbria, he finds little has changed, as far as his own limited prospects go, but in his absence his young family has altered immensely. His wife Ellen has found a sense of self worth in her war time jobs, and their six-year-old son Joe, accustomed to his mother's undivided love, doesn't welcome the father he barely remembers. And Sam finds the traumatic scenes of Burma have changed him too, making the confines of this working class Cumbrian town stifling. The result is a family in turmoil, which reaches breaking point when Sam resolves to emigrate to Australia. Based on Bragg's own family, this taut, powerful novel sits firmly in the tradition of his hugely popular Cumbrian novels.