THEN AND US

Then And Us demonstrates how Champion can produce a novel with a natural very ‘real’ style complementing the touchingly brave and awkward not-so-long-ago world of young adulthood battling their own and class-divided emotions. With its setting and tonal range reminding one of Waugh - at times an almost anti-Brideshead Revisited - the dialogue setting and characters are so well-placed in their time and Champion’s more usual ideological polemics are nicely tucked into the mouths of the pedagogues leaving the characters to breath and speak to us movingly.