(Fourth Estate, 2001).
Netley’s vast Victorian hospital stood for one hundred years of history, its traumatic, gothic story echoing out through personal memoir and collective memory.
‘A book that has everything a passionate reader could want – a subject that far transcends the trivial pursuits of contemporary writing, concerns both public and private, astonishing details, stylistic precision, a unique sense of time and place, and a great depth of vision.’
W.G. Sebald, Sunday Telegraph.
4 am: the state of wetness, the rain and the sea, the way it will be; swimming in a darkened, diluted world of possibilities
