In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. It’s 1919, and a young woman named Maisie, on a day’s holiday in Weston-super-Mare, England, determines to lose her virginity while her future husband spends the afternoon at a pub. My grandpa rarely offered an opinion on anything, but then he was deaf as a post so he might not have heard the question in the first place. The epic tale of Harry Clifton’s life begins in 1920, with the chilling words, ‘I was told my father was killed in the war.

Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. The schoolmaster couldn't hide his surprise when he saw me sitting in the front row, and was even more surprised when I paid close attention to the morning lesson for the first time.As I said, I’m a huge Jeffery Archer fan, and I love that he’s gone back to chronicle the life of a family, much as he did with As the Crow Flies among other books. His father was a war hero, but it will be twenty-one tumultuous years before Harry discovers the truth about how his father really died and if, in fact, he even was his father. His mother, of little means but great determination, thus resolves to enroll him in public school where he will receive a strong education. Maisie Clifton - Harry's mother who after sudden death of her husband Arthur, tries to make ends meet to support her family and Harry's education.

It was launched by Jeffrey Archer himself in Bangalore, India in March 2011, as the beginning of a global book tour. Volume one takes us from the ravages of the Great War to the outbreak of the Second World War, when Harry must decide whether to take up a place at Oxford, or join the navy and go to war with Hitler’s Germany. In Jeffrey Archer’s masterful hands, you will be taken on a journey that you won’t want to end, even after you turn the last page of this unforgettable yarn, because you will be faced with a dilemma that neither you, nor Harry Clifton could ever have anticipated. The choir mistress turned a blind eye to the fact that I placed theft ahead of murder, couldn't spell "adultery," and certainly didn't know what it meant. Despite his unhelpful mutterings, I set about writing the alphabet on any piece of scrap paper I could find.

Haskins, the chief ganger, because if he ever found me loitering, to use his favorite word, he would send me off with a kick up the backside and the threat: "If I see you loiterin' round here again, my lad, I'll report you to the headmaster.

Plenty of suspenseful drama makes this book a great start to a new series that I'm really looking forward to reading. Harry’s existence is defined by the death of his father and he seems destined to a life on the docks until a remarkable gift wins him a scholarship to an exclusive boys school and entry into a world he could never have envisaged. The plot revolves around the protagonist Harry Clifton, spanning the time between the end of World War I and the beginning of the Second World War. I have a feeling that even the devil would have been frightened of Miss Monday, because the Reverend Watts certainly was. The novel is set in Bristol, England, from 1919 to 1940 and centers on Harry Clifton, a young boy destined to follow in the footsteps of his father and uncle and work on the docks until a new world is opened up to him.

A week later he wrote my first four-letter word on the blackboard, "book," and then five, "house," and six, "school. I’m a history nerd, and love to read things that truly incorporate a particular time period into a story. Time is the first part of the Clifton Chronicles series, so this book mainly deals with the time that Harry’s at school. BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us. A dock worker in Bristol, Harry never knew his father, but he learns about life on the docks from his uncle, who expects Harry to join him at the shipyard once he's left school.