Description
Book SynopsisAn evocative historical thriller based in one of London's original suburbs.
Set in 1912, Bedford Park is not just a London suburb: it is a crucible for enlightenment and modernity inhabited by people who wish to better themselves - and those who should know better. It is a singular place, architecturally sidestepping the modern whilst encouraging those with new ideas to take up residence.
Into this mix sails Cal Kidd from America. In a coffee-house he makes the acquaintance of Binks, a man whose occupation in the City is vague but he seems to know everybody. And so Cal meets real-life characters like Maud Gonne and Frank Harris, while Ford Madox Ford, W.B. Yeats and Joseph Conrad appear also. Then Binks is gruesomely murdered, and after never really having to deal with anything in his life, Cal the observer now has to act.
The spirit of the age is what makes BEDFORD PARK so evocative, a time when everyone tries to invoke the future but often looks to the past to achieve it. Among the host of vivid characters, the greatest is London itself, a city in a constant state of flux whose centre is journalism. All the detail makes the place exotic and exciting - the marathon at the Olympics in 1908, a ride on the Flip Flap in White City, news being chalked up on dock walls for those who couldn't afford papers, a woman peeling potatoes in the Biosphere cinema in Bishopsgate. London has to comment instantly upon itself or be commented upon, always new and important.
Trade Reviewa brilliantly lively, often very funny reconstruction of a lost world of artistic endeavour and social idealism. * SUNDAY TIMES *
Bryan Appleyard is our foremost guide to understanding contemporary culture. This exploration of what it means to be human today grips the reader from the front page. * John Gray *
There are great science writers and there are great art writers - and then there's Bryan Appleyard. He's both. * John Humphreys *
Bryan Appleyard is that rarest of birds, a journalist who can mine factual subjects for their poetic resonance right across the spectrum. He is our main man for this kind of writing. * Clive James *
One of the most interesting, curious, cultured and trenchant writers on this planet. * Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of THE BLACK SWAN *
Bedford Park is a witty and erudite historical novel, set mostly in London in the late-Victorian and Edwardian eras...It is also a brilliantly lively, often very funny reconstruction of a lost world of artistic endeavour and social idealism through which Appleyard's American abroad wanders in a fruitless search for his true self. -- Nick Rennison * SUNDAY TIMES *
Appleyard has created this novel, set in the West London suburb of Bedford Park, around the lives of noted Edwardians...Beautifully written. * DAILY MAIL *
Deft characterisations...virtuoso language...dry and economical wit...excellent fiction. * THE SPECTATOR *
