In BABEL TOWER a cast of striking characters play out their personal dramas amid the clashing politics, passionate ideals & stirring languages of the early 1960s. Frederica (the heroine of VIRGIN IN THE GARDEN & STILL LIFE) now teaching English in an art college, is hiding herself & her son Leo from a violent husband; her urge towards freedom later leads to an angry, humiliating divorce case. Hers is not the only struggle: her friend Jude writes a novel, BABBELTOWER, which is tried for obscenity; her brother-in-law Daniel becomes involved in new movements for London's poor & distressed. Their crises mirror those of the age
- abroad, this is the decade of the Berlin Wall, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the death of Kennedy; at home it is the era of the LADY CHATTERLEY case, of the Beatles, of Mods & Rockers, art school riots, the Profumo scandal. Moving & absorbing & full of comedy as well as strife, this superb novel brings our own recent past to vivid, & disturbing life.