Rumours of a Hurricane - Tapa dura

By the author of White City Blue, winner of the 1999 Whitbread First Novel Award. A man teeters drunk on the edge of the pavement and takes a deep draught from a can clutched in his hand. He is hit by a lorry, badly injured and rushed to hospital. His National Insurance card identifies him as Charles William Buck and he has on him a newspaper cutting about the musician Mantovani headed 'Goodbye Mr Music'. Once Buck had been somebody with a wife, home and son. Now all is gone. The story moves back to 1979 when Margaret Thatcher came to power. It is a novel about one rather ordinary man and his life in the 1980s. It's about power, money and families and Tim Lott turns this ordinary man's life into a powerful and cleverly woven tale.

1991, London. A street drunk is rushed into casualty, the victim of a horrific traffic accident. He carries a social security card, a digital watch, and a torn and yellowed newspaper cutting - an obituary. But his relatives cannot be traced. How did he end up here? To answer that we need to go back to 1979, a time before the Big Bang, before Margaret Thatcher came to power, before greed became good, before the hurricane.