Father and Son - A memoir about family, the past and mortality

<p><b>'A beautiful, compelling memoir. ... <i>Father and Son</i> is an exquisite, sometimes lunatic tension between powerful emotions and carnage on one side, and on the other, the conventional codes of what must remain unsaid. This, Raban's final work, is a gorgeous achievement&quot; &ndash; Ian McEwan</b><br><br>On 11 June 2011, three days short of his sixty-ninth birthday, Jonathan Raban suffered a stroke which left him unable to use the right side of his body, wheelchair-bound in a rehab facility and endlessly frustrated by his newfound physical limitations. As he resisted the overbearing ministrations of the nurses helping him along the road to recovery, Raban began to reflect not only on the measure of his own life but the extraordinary story of his parents&rsquo; early marriage, conducted for three years by letter while his father fought in the Second World War.<br><br>Jonathan Raban engages profoundly and