Mr Vann uses two sequences to transform what could be another routine tale of small-town life, hurling the book into the outer darkness of the heart.

ECONOMIST: The many miseries that shape a marriage

A. Butler, a child of empire if ever there was one, describes his failing the Eton scholarship (the mere fact that his family wanted a scholarship would have told the discerning something about his origins) and being consigned to the outer darkness of Marlborough school and Pembroke College, Cambridge.

ECONOMIST: The British empire