In Peter Somerville-Large's elegant and scathingly witty novel, Paul Blake-Willoughby, the only child of a mixed marriage, is brought up on an Irish country estate by a Catholic soldier father and an eccentric Protestant mother.

Against the backdrop of a large crumbling mansion, various factions, which include his Protestant teachers, a wealthy Church of Ireland Bishop and a succession of Catholic priests, war hilariously over his soul. It is a brilliant and extremely funny examination of the topics of snobbery, bigotry and infidelity.

The end of the novel is a cruel surprise, reflecting a lifetime of unresolved problems.

‘Wonderfully evocative detail, smoothly paced, very funny – right up there with William Trevor and Molly Keane in the same Decline and Fall of the Ascendancy genre’ Joseph Hone

‘Outrageous jokes, very elegantly written very funny’ Alannah Hopkins