[WrinnaArraple]

Philip Hensher - The Northern Clemency : a huge slab of a book which I have to admit I struggled through covering the 1970s to something like the recent past seen through the lives principally of two Sheffield families. As someone who lived through what are now the terribly unfashionable 1970s I worried that there was going to be a rather tongue in cheek sneering at attitudes and the way we lived then. There was - but not as bad as I feared. I was struggling with the characters at one stage found it hard to distinguish one from another they were all a bit beige to me. I was less happy with the way he covered the 1980s miners' strike (don't get me started)...but just as I was thinking that I didnt like the book at all it rather picked up over the last couple of furlongs and ended rather satisfactorily. A bit of a curate's egg. All in all I give it a /