Melvyn Bragg's A Son of War begins where A Soldier's Return ended. The previous novel--a moving account of the struggles, social and psychological, faced by a Burma veteran returning to Cumbrian hometown life with his wife and six-year-old son--picked up the WH Smith 1999 Literary Award. But whereas A Soldier's Return was largely Sam's story, Bragg here gives equal weight to Ellen, with her wide-eyed adoration for a long-lost brother and her high hopes of life on the new edge-of-town estate, cruelly foiled by Sam's dreams of owning a pub. But central is the "son of war", the endearing Joe, torn between being "Sam's lad" and "Ellen's boy", the fledgling boxer or the budding pianist.

Bragg evokes well the petty yet momentous discoveries of a young boy, equally fixated on Disney's Snow White and girls doing handstands. While this is very much the personal story of one family, with heavy hints of autobiography, it's also the picture of Britain emerging from the war, throwing off Glenn Miller and Bing Crosby--a new Britain of rationing, the Big Freeze and strikes, talk of nuclear war, socialism, Joe Louis versus Jersey Joe Walcott. Once again, Bragg has succeeded in conjuring an epoch of unprecedented change, and capturing both its joys and its miseries.