Daniel's family is dominated by his drunken wreck of a grandfather, a Great War casualty, who is the specific reason Daniel was sent away to school in the first place. The boy yearns for his beautiful, grieving mother to marry again so she can have a life of her own. But only men who can dance need apply. Drawn into the gangland violence of both staff and boys in the Junior House, impelled by aggressive needs within his own psyche, Daniel spins a web of wildly experimental relationships hoping they will lead to enlightenment, but catastrophe is never far behind. The Archivist is David Pownall's twelfth novel - the second to centre on the son's search for his father on a landscape of violence and anarchy. The first to have this theme was The White Cutter. For more, go to www.davidpownall.co.uk