John Bowen

Beginning in the basement of Foyle's bookshop in the Charing Cross Road in London and moving to rainmaking in Texas, love in Chew Magna, a camp in the Mendips, a storm at sea, sharks, sunstroke, a giant squid and a fight to the death on a raft, this work tells a fable that makes a serious comment on the human situation. Meer

In John Bowen's The Birdcage Peter Ash and Norah Palmer have been living together for nine years. By turns wildly funny and frightening The Birdcage is a novel about the end of a love affair, the repercussions and the emotional fallout. Meer

Featuring a story about the Baker family: the father Justin is a retired Colonel, the mother, Teresa, is over-possessive and refuses to admit that her sons have grown-up, the sons Julian and Charles, one is a married advertising copywriter with a penchant for extra-marital affairs while the other is withdrawn and suicidal. Meer

It is also a critique of powerful corporations that are controlled and organised by the greed of those who operate them. An absorbing and adult novel, Storyboard cemented John Bowen's reputation as a mature and intelligent novelist when it was first published in 1960. Meer