Banqueting club, Fairbrother, George

Norman Armstrong and Alf Burton are an unlikely pair of political friends. One is a left-wing journalist who grew up in poverty, a man with a national reputation and a sharp tongue. The other is the Tory Chief Whip and the latest in a long family line of distinguished politicians. A violent argument between the two proves to be the beginning of a lasting bond. When Alf tells Norman that he has been lucky enough to secure access to a revelatory manuscript written by Charlotte Morris - an Edwardian popular novelist who made herself unpopular with the Establishment by campaigning against Kitcheners concentration camps - both men immediately understand the potentially explosive significance of the event. But neither could have predicted the extraordinary way in which, against the background of 1980s Britain and the imminent miners strike, this political thriller would unfold.