It's the Fifties, and every weekday all of Britain likes to tune in to its favourite BBC radio serial, THE PARKERS. No wonder a young man at a loose end, and frustrated by his rejection for National Service, gravitates towards the makers of the programme - to its founder, the enigmatic Verity Orchard, her ambivalent husband Charles, and Cassie, daughter of 'Elizabeth Parker' herself. They all make claims on him - claims that will pursue him down the years into late middle age. And then there's his cousin, lan...Paul Binding's novel is a poignant examination of emotional and cultural confusion. Both funny and sad, it captures the ambience of a fascinating period of British life. Resonant with the intrigue of soap opera it is a novel full of character and characters, a post-modern journey through an England long-since disappeared.

INTRODUCED BY PAUL BINDING 'I'm a huge fan of Barbara Pym' Richard Osman 'I'd sooner read a new Barbara Pym than a new Jane Austen' Philip Larkin Dulcie Mainwaring is always helping others, but never looks out for herself - especially in the realm of love. Her friend Viola is besotted by the alluring Dr Aylwin Forbes, so surely it isn't prying if Dulcie helps things along? Aylwin, however, is smitten with Dulcie's pretty, young niece. And perhaps Dulcie herself, however ridiculous it might be, is falling, just a little, for Aylwin. Once life's little humiliations are played out, maybe love will be returned, and fondly, after all . . . 'One of her very best - comic, heartrending, brave; in short, like life itself' Shirley Hazzard 'No novelist brings more telling observation or more gentle pleasure' Jilly Cooper

"An achievement by a writer completely master of his technique, and I strongly recommend it." - C. P. Snow, "Sunday Times"
"Voluptuously readable . . . an impressive piece of work." - "New Statesman"
" R]are, and indeed astonishing . . . exercise s] a continuous fascination." - Lionel Hale, "The Observer"
"Mr. King has something to say in this novel, and he knows how to say it." - John Betjeman, "Daily Telegraph"
In Florence on business, Max Westfield has brought his wife and children with him to make a holiday of it. But while shrewdly perceptive in financial matters, Max is completely blind to the passions and tragedies that soon begin to surround him. His wife despises him and is brazenly having an affair with a cynical expatriate, his secretary wants to be his mistress and dreams of accompanying him back to England, and his teenage son has fallen in love with a working-class Italian youth. With what Paul Binding calls his "darkly penetrative vision of existence," Francis King weaves these narrative threads into a complex and gripping story of isolation, despair, and death beneath the intense glare of the Tuscan sun.
Francis King (1923-2011) received favourable reviews for his first three novels, but it was his fourth, "The Dividing Stream" (1951), winner of the Somerset Maugham Award, that secured his international reputation as one of the foremost young writers of his generation. This edition, the first in more than 60 years, includes a new introduction by novelist and critic Paul Binding and a reproduction of the original dust jacket art by Leslie Wood.

'A disturbing, dark novel and an auspicious debut.' - Brian Moore
'The obsessive love of one brother for another makes absorbing reading. The picture of the selfish cold father is very convincing, I found the unwitting betrayal of the father by the despised son most moving. There are fine descriptions throughout.' - James Purdy
'Extraordinarily tightly plotted, well - and in places, brilliantly - written, and concerned with issues of major human importance.' - "British Book News"
'A real talent for describing places, and an admirable restraint which gives his writing tautness. The book is fired by sincerity ... the writing is admirable.' - "Books and Bookmen"
'A carefully husbanded talent with skill and sensitivity ... drawn with arresting acidity ... vividly evoked.' - Jonathan Keates, "Observer"
Dan Varney, in Madrid for a conference, goes in search of a night of adventure to help take his mind off the terrible events of one year earlier, when an act of betrayal left his father dead and his beloved brother James in an institution. The unexpected sound of a harmonica playing one of James's favourite tunes draws Dan to Kevin, a handsome English youth with a dark secret and a connection to Dan's own past. Dan and Kevin feel not only attraction but sympathy, but when Dan learns of Kevin's role in the mysterious tragedy that struck the Varney family, could any kind of relationship survive? This new edition of Paul Binding's Harmonica's Bridegroom coincides with the 30th anniversary of the novel's original publication and features a new afterword by the author.