Joff Winterhart

At this point in her life, septuagenarian Margaret is particular about the things she likes. These include looking out of train windows, graveyards in the rain, an afternoon sherry. But most of all, it is her lifelong subject, the obscure 17th century polymath J.W Preece, who she has devoted her life to studying. Margaret doesn’t like: drawing attention to herself, extravagant behaviour and television. When she meets a young history TV producer, Lucy, they form a tentative bond, despite Margaret’s reluctance to be drawn into the media world. Several decades Margaret’s junior, heartbroken and unsure of herself, Lucy finds curious new inspiration as she falls under the spell of Margaret’s passions. With inimitable sensitivity and humour, cult-favourite graphic novelist Joff Winterhart returns with an irresistible portrait of two women navigating their age gap, loss, self-made-celebrity-historians, and bad knees…

Sam is 27 and needs to get a job. Keith, who claims to be a second cousin of his (absent) father, offers him one. On Keith's card it says he does `distribution and delivery', which seems to consist of `a lot of driving around, getting out of the car for a few minutes and then getting back in', Sam tells his mother. And so the days go by, Keith driving to a trading estate, ducking into a portakabin, all the while telling Sam stories about his first boss, Geoff Crozier, his mentor in distribution and delivery. As the weeks pass, Sam gets to know Keith's friends, flirty Hazel-Claire from whom they buy two pasties every day at lunchtime, a variety of receptionists, and a few tantalising secrets from Keith's past... As in Days of the Bagnold Summer, Joff Winterhart is a master at depicting ordinary life in all its utterly poignant and funny mundanity.