Tap Dancer

<p> <strong>'My favourite novel and one I wish I'd written.' ALAN BENNETT</strong> </p><p> <em>Winner of the McKitterick Prize for best first novel by an author aged over 40 and the Hawthornden Prize for imaginative literature.</em> </p><p>Everyone craves retirement from the Civil Service don't they? That time for an ageing patriarch to enjoy the fruits of a well-earned pension and the respect of his family; maybe even to indulge in a love of music halls and metropolitan life. If only people would listen and do as they were told...</p><p>His fourth son William the long-suffering narrator is the constant butt of his father's jokes and victim of his brothers' indifference. But as death divorce and other darker dramas follow father and son slowly establish a strange harmony.</p>