D. J. Taylor – författare

When Henry Ireland dies unexpectedly from what appears to be a riding accident in August 1863, the failed landowner leaves behind little save his high-strung young widow, Isabel—who somehow ends up in the home of Ireland''s friend James Dixey. A celebrated naturalist, Dixey collects strange trophies in his secluded, decaying manse and has questionable associations with rather unsavory characters—including a pair of thuggish poachers named Dewar and Dunbar. Dixey''s precocious, inquisitive young servant, Esther, cannot turn a blind eye to the suspicious activities surrounding her. While in the crime-ridden streets of London, a determined captain of Scotland Yard follows the threads that may well link a daring train robbery to the disappearance of a disturbed heiress as well as to the possible murder of Henry Ireland.

D. J. Taylor''s Kept is a gorgeously intricate, dazzling reinvention of Victorian life and passions that is also a riveting investigation into some of the darkest, most secret chambers of the human heart.

Between walking by the river and imbibing tasteless liquor at Dr Feelgood’s, a mice-infested emporium presided over by the dubious Mousookseem, David Castell is compiling his Notebooks. Though thwarted by Caro, who runs the house, buys the ink, and sullenly disapproves of his master’s activities, David perseveres, believing the past to be ‘an infinitely more agreeable subject for speculation than the future’. David’s notebooks glide between past and present, juxtaposing a number of settings: Oxford, where drunken eccentrics try to steer clear of sinister dons; East Anglia, where myth and legend are flourishing between the wide expanse of sky and field; and another, distant Eastern Land where oranges rot in the sun and the generator hums when Caro, idle or vengeful by turns, chooses to turn it on. All this is comic grist to the author’s mill. Through the musings of its erudite and pig-headed narrator, the novel becomes a cunning debate about the various ways – duped by our own imaginations – we take liberties with history, throwing artful, sidelong glances at the metaphysics of fiction, but not so as you would notice. As past and present collide – in unexpected ways – so the debate continues, as elusive as it is entertaining.

Nervously monitored from a twelfth-floor eyrie near Blackfriars, Scott Marshall’s world looks as if it’s falling apart. It’s late 1990 in the City of London, the Iraqis are in Kuwait, the Old Lady’s sick (Mrs Thatcher, not the Bank of England) and the wild times are over. The only thing a thirtysomething Anglo-American with a job at KLS, the legendarily predatory management consultants, an eating phobia and some exalted social connections can do is sit tight and weather the storm. Walham Town, the struggling fourth division football side (‘We’re not one of your glamour clubs’) now launched on an unlooked-for cup-run by their megalomaniac chairman, seems a safe bolt-hole. But Walham’s shattered finances harbour a nest of deceit and subterfuge. Meanwhile, secretive, anonymous Miranda is steadily rearranging Scott’s emotional life, his father’s plans to visit have released all kinds of ghosts from their shared past, and his boss’s intrigues with a brace of City cronies may or may not rebound to his advantage. As these parallel lines start to converge, Scott’s position turns ever less secure. The arrival of Scott’s ailing father, with some bizarre ideas on how to spend his vacation, could hardly come at a worse moment. . . Taking place on a pontoon bridge between America and England and supplying an insider’s view of how the City works, D. J. Taylor’s third novel is a penetrating examination of national identity (on both sides of the Atlantic), missed connections in family life, and the way we behave to the people we love.