The Last Enchantments

Simon Watson (English, 1962)

The SONS OF THE MORNING sequence takes its hero, Johnny Clarke, through the adventure of growing up. Set in the 1950s, A Storm of Cherries creates a sometimes bleak, sometimes affectionate and humorous picture of prep school life of the period. Anyone who experienced its peculiar cruelties and consolations will recognize staff and boys, language and lore; anyone who didn’t will enter a strange world.  Volume 2, Dancing Days is set in public school.

In Volume 3, The Last Enchantments (published this month), the dramatic events of 1962-3 – the Cuban missile crisis, the long hard winter, the Profumo scandal and the meteoric rise of the Beatles – culminating in the assassination of President Kennedy provide the turbulent background to the undergraduate adventures of Johnny Clarke at 'Cardinal College': adventures political, amorous, social, literary, sporting and religious. Britain is wriggling out of its post-war chrysalis but at the same time there is the heritage of Oxford and old England to be fought for – and saved.

For more information about the trilogy please visit www.wordwisebooks.co.uk