They married at St Mary Abbots Kensington in September 1948 the groom the ambitious son of the editor of the Express; the bride the beautiful somewhat rebellious daughter of blamelessly upstanding family of the provincial middle-middle class. A young man who was pushed forward by family expectation a young woman pulled back... In this poignant & perceptive portrait of his parents catastrophically acrimonious divorce Rupert Christiansen tells the story of a generation. With the narrative power of the likes of The Ice Storm & Revolutionary Road he chronicles the experience not just of one particular class but of an era when the loosening of the stays on middle-class marriage precipitated a rollercoaster decade of heartbreak & loss.