Guardian Fiction Prize Winner 1980

Booker Prize Shortlist 1980

Filmed with Kenneth Branaugh

and Colin Firth

" When the train stopped I stumbled out, nudging and kicking the kitbag before me.  Back down the platform someone was calling despairingly, 'Oxgodby...Oxgodby.' No-one offered a hand so I climbed back into the compartment, stumbling over ankles and feet to get at the fish-bass (on the rack) and my folding camp bed (under the seat).  If this was a fair sample of northerners, then this was enemy country so I wasn't too careful where I put my boots.  I heard one chap draw in his breath and another grunt : neither spoke. "

A long spring uncovering a Medieval wall painting in rural Yorkshire allows a young man time for recuperation after WW1.  There's a love affair that doesn't quite happen, and a singular cast of supporting characters.  This story of wistful reminiscence of an England long gone, is written in English constructed as it should be.

"A Profoundly Affecting Tale" Auberon Waugh

"It is short, it is odd, it is memorable, it is admirable" Marganhita Laski

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Booker Prize Shortlist 1986

" 'No, not if ten Vice-Presidents and each with two heads on his neck were coming to unveil it,' Mr.Gidner said sourly.  'God willing - and I'm pretty sure he is - I never again shall set foot in your United States.  Never! Guest of Honour? Honour! What has honour to do with Pollocks Crossing? And this monument you go on about!...Well, get the inscription right.  What about this? Henry Fairwell and James Ardvaak Hereabouts done to death by their countrymen. July 5th 1930.' "

A story recounted by an English school teacher of his experience in drought- ravaged South Dakota during the 1930's.  The conflict between the liberals and the dominant conservatism of the mid-West points out disturbing elements in the American world.

"He is a wholly original writer and has written a book quite unlike any other" Nina Bawden

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" This isn't the Official History.  It is only a rough sketch for it.  The Official History will be much longer, every detail will be double checked to make sure it is the unvarnished truth, bad taste will be expunged, its Style is going to have more quality.  It also will cost more.  But this will do nicely if all you want to know was what happened.  And what happened happened because three - well, maybe four - remarkable men happened to be in the same spot at the same time.  Just pure chance! Which, when you come to think about, is why most unusual things happen.  It boils down to this - THEY WERE THERE. "

The village football team's progress to Wembley is an excuse for parody of the sports pages of the nationals, modern management, and village life.  Yet it remains an inspiration for all managers to go out and achieve the impossible.  There is great humour pathos and constant Englishness.

One of the top ten novels in the Observer Sport Monthly  - May 2005

"Quite simply the best football novel in fiction, its atmosphere absolutely authentic." D.J.Taylor

"It delivers with a kind of derisive gaiety some murderous blows at the fatheads who populate professional football." Benny Green, TheSpectator

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" The Vicar was an intellectual.  'The low and level beet fields stretched far away' he misquoted.  'Yet folk live here!' Live here! Good Heavens, why ever not! I thought, for Fenland was embedded in my bones and likely to be, yea even unto times end.  Some distant day, in some other-where, a husband would cry pettishly that he simply didn't understand me.  And the poor fellow would be right.  For how could he, never having witnessed our watery distances dissolving into darkness? (To this day I feel uneasy in Beauty Spots). "

An eighteen year old sixth form girl tells of what happened to her when she left her stultifying Fenland home in search of life beyond school, and also her real mother.  This is a book about people, full of subtle wit and literary allusions; it rather defies description.

"This book, generally so witty, so vivacious, and so original is a gem" Francis King, The Spectator

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" It may seem to you, as it does to me, that as many hapless enterprises succeed as those scrupulously planned.  And so it was with Harpole and Foxberrow General Publishers.  The firm's beginning was accidental, its progress haphazard, its end hastened not by commercial incompetence but by a spiritual ennui - as though the heart had gone out of it.  A final memo from George Harpole supports my view : 'Hetty dear, you ask what brought things to a finish. Well...I'm not sure.  Anyway, not absolutely sure.  You see one thing seems to spring from another as though, in its ups and downs, our little business had a mind of its own.' "

What are books, where do they come from? This book tries to provide an answer, whilst it cocks a snook at the great literary merry-go-round, from very small publisher to the big Lit. Crit. prizes.

"It's as accomplished, as entertaining and as outstanding as anything its author has done" D.J. Taylor, The Spectator

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The early train brings Peplow, intent on avenging his young son’s death - the target a young showman unconscious of his danger.

On this day of the annual fair the newcomer and the residents of Great Minden each have their own agenda, their own choices to make, their own pasts to deal with. Ruskin is an embittered ex-RAF pilot, confined to his first floor flat with its view across the fair, living vicariously through the daily round of his neighbours. Croser, a libidinous young teacher has a hapless choice to make between nubile but bland Effie, or eloping with Georgie, the Rector’s exotic, restless wife.

As the characters and the sub-plots entwine within this wry, vivid novel, the tale of revenge becomes more of a black comedy moving like a thriller to its startling climax

"His novel depends not on story and suspense but on the delightful, ironic and professional writing." Thomas Hinde, The Spectator

"By mingling knockabout comedy and high seriousness Carr achieves a rare honesty, a kind of soured sweetness found in the work of no other contemporary writer." D.J.Taylor

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"This whole business from start to end, was like a game of cricket, the issue never sure, who’d win, who’d lose, and who’d just watch...and go away!" - Flanders is stationed with a flying-boat squadron on the wartime coasts of West Africa. His idea of fair play is shattered by Turton, an officer but no gentleman. Turton sets out to take from people what they most want, self-esteem, success, the cricket final on the dusty square, even Caroline, the girl both Flanders and his friend Wakerley fall for. But all is not fair, even in love and war. . .

"The best cricket based novel I have read, an analogy is drawn between the way one has to wait, both in life and in the game, for one’s fortune to change..." Matthew Engel The Guardian

"There is a blasting passion and, when the novel expands itself to receive the final notes of tragedy, it does so with a cunning that recalls the game at its best." William Trevor,The Guardian

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"The idea was to write a sort of text book for teachers and to tell parents more about what goes on in primary schools. And there is just about everything here - free meals, hymn-singing, caretakers, the New Maths, school visits, log-books, etc. etc. But Emma Foxberrow got out of hand and perhaps not so many readers take it seriously as about education. But some do and it has been said that all teachers whilst training should read it ....Any way it was all I wanted to say about a job I did for 9 years before the war and for 21 years after it."

George Harpole is in his first term as Acting Head of Tampling St Nicholas Primary School. Determined to climb the career ladder the way ahead seems clear to teaching success. Little does he imagine that he’ll be hampered by his honesty, fair mindedness, and a genuine liking for the children in his care (and then there are his fellow teachers to consider). They all contribute to his downfall, or at least to the point where iron enters his soul....

"The funniest and perhaps the truest story about running a school that I have ever read" Frank Muir