Hardback, colour and black and white illustrations, 565 pages, W165mm x H240mm
Sequestered in his blitz-battered Regent’s Park hours in 1944, the
ailing H.G. Wells looks back on a life crowded with incident, books, and
women. He recalls his unpromising start, and early struggles to acquire
an education and make a living as a teacher; his rapid rise to fame as a
writer with a prophetic imagination and a comic touch; his plunge into
socialist politics; his belief in free love and energetic practice of
it.
Unfolding this astonishing story, David Lodge depicts a man
as contradictory as he was talented: a socialist who enjoyed his
affluence, an acclaimed novelist who turned against the literary novel; a
feminist womanizer, sensual yet incurably romantic, irresistible and
exasperating by turns, but always vitally human.