His Coldest Winter

(Paperback)

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A major new novel from the critically acclaimed author of IF THE INVADER COMES.
On Boxing Day 1962 it began to snow. Over the next two months England froze. It was the coldest winter since 1740. The sea iced over. Cars could be driven across the Thames.

Riding home from London in that first snowfall, on the powerful motorbike he has been given for Christmas, seventeen-year-old Alan Rae has a brush with death. Immediately he meets a girl, Cynthia, who will change his life. But someone else is equally preoccupied with her, Geoffrey, a young scientist who works with Alan's father in the race with the Americans and the Russians to develop the microchip. Alan, Geoffrey and Cynthia become linked by a web of secrets which, while the country remains in icy suspension, threatens everything they ever trusted.

Derek Beaven's new novel is a moral drama. It demands that we question who our real friends are, and asks us to reconsider the scientific assumptions upon which all of modern life, and much of modern fiction, is based.

Reviews

Praise for HIS COLDEST WINTER: 'His Coldest Winter is an unabashed celebration of ordinary England in its last moment of technical supremacy.' Kasia Boddy, Guardian 'The writing is persuasive, etching the imagery on the mind!Bevan can also catch people and their attitudes as well as landscape.' Hugo Barnacle, Sunday Times 'With wonderful imaginative intensity, expressed in an original style of elliptical impressionism galvanised by sudden realist shocks, Derek Beaven uses the austere background to dramatise a story of rivalry of young love, the rivalry of ton-up motor-cycle gangs, and the rivalry of international industrial espionage of military urgency.' The Sunday Telegraph 'A master of evoking atmosphere!Beaven writes about physical surroundings and sensations with absolute clarity and a poetically oblique manner. Beaven's best descriptions are reserved for his character's reactions to danger and confusion.' Sunday Business Post Praise for Derek Beaven: 'Beaven has the gift for creating insistently human individuals who prove to be illuminating under pressure ! a fine engagement with the largest and smallest details of what it is to be English.' Lavinia Greenlaw, TLS 'He gives us all the uncertainty, liveliness, rumours and unheroic struggles of the present ! as clear as a Vermeer mirror.' David Robertson, Scotsman 'Large, deft, prickly and ambitious. His work practically explodes with narrative assurance.' Julie Myerson, Guardian 'His is a prodigal talent.' Lorna Sage 'Not since I first read Jim Crace have I been so much impressed by a novelist recently embarked on his career.' Francis King 'Beaven is reminiscent of William Faulkner ! distinctive and unforgettable.' David Horspool, Daily Telegraph 'An important and original writer.' Hilary Mantel

Author Bio

Derek Beaven is the author of three novels: Newtons Niece was published in 1994, Acts of Mutiny in 1998, If the Invader Comes in 2001 and His Coldest Winter (2005). Newtons Niece was shortlisted for the Writers Guild Best Fiction Book of 1994, and won a Commonwealth Writers Prize for a first novel (Eurasia) 1994/5. Acts of Mutiny was shortlisted for both the Guardian Fiction Prize and the Encore Award. If the Invader Comes was longlisted for the Booker Prize. Derek Beaven lives in Maidenhead, Berkshire.