Arthur and George by Julian Barnes

Arthur and George grow up worlds and miles apart in late nineteenth-century Britain: Arthur in shabby-genteel Edinburgh, George in the vicarage of a small Staffordshire village. Arthur becomes a doctor, and then a writer; George a solicitor in Birmingham. Arthur is to become one of the most famous men of his age, George remains in hardworking obscurity. But as the new century begins, they are brought together by a sequence of events which made sensational headlines at the time as The Great Wyrley Outrages. With a mixture of detailed research and vivid imagination, Julian Barnes brings to life not just this long-forgotten case, but the inner lives of these two very different men. Barnes uses his suave, elegant prose  to tell a true-life tale, which is as terrifically told as any by its hero Conan Doyle himself.

Shortlisted for the 2005 Man Booker and a choice for Richard and Judy’s Book Club 2006

10 copies