The Tap Dancer

-My favourite novel and one I wish I-d written.- ALAN BENNETTWinner of the McKitterick Prize for best first novel by an author aged over 40, and the Hawthornden Prize for imaginative literature.Everyone craves retirement from the Civil Service, don-t they? That time for an ageing patriarch to enjoy the fruits of a well-earned pension and the respect of his family; maybe even to indulge in a love of music halls and metropolitan life. If only people would listen and do as they were told-His fourth son William, the long-suffering narrator, is the constant butt of his father-s jokes and victim of his brothers- indifference. But as death, divorce and other darker dramas follow, father and son slowly establish a strange harmony.