Pat Barker

1 'No point being eighty, is there?' said Liza. 'If you can't be a bit outrageous?' And certainly she looked it, Stephen thought, with her scarlet headsquare tilted crazily over one eye, giving her the look of a senile pirate. 'I'm sorry I didn't let you in when you come before. Thought you...

1 Finished with the War A Soldier's Declaration I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it. I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I...

ONE In deck-chairs all along the front the bald pink knees of Bradford businessmen nuzzled the sun. Billy Prior leant on the sea-wall. Ten or twelve feet below him a family was gathering its things together for the trek back to boarding-house or railway station. A fat, middle-aged woman,...

Finished with the War A Soldier's Declaration I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it. I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I...

ONE In formal beds beside the Serpentine, early tulips stood in tight-lipped rows. Billy Prior spent several moments setting up an enfilade, then, releasing his companion's arm, seized an imaginary machine-gun and blasted the heads off the whole bloody lot of them. Myra stared in amazement....