Ruffian On The Stair (Virago Modern Classics) - Hardcover

Her great talent is to be able to take you along a perfectly ordinary street, rip the façade away and show the strange and passionate events that go on behind closed doors (DAILY TELEGRAPH)

It is a measure of Bawden's skill, that she manages to show both the terrors of extreme longevity and its comic potential. But then she is a wonderfully accomplished writer and this is a very enjoyable book. (THE TIMES)

An upper-middle class version of Mike Leigh's SECRETS AND LIES. (INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY)

Bawden has a penetraing eye for both the insalubrious and gorgeous detail, homing in with language that is always crisp and precise. (GUARDIAN)

In six days Silas Mudd will be one hundred years old and is alarmingly healthy - more than can be said of his son. 'Not sure he'll make old bones' he confides loudly to his daughter-in-law. Grumpily flattered by the fuss over his impending party - even from his irritating family, Silas' greater pleasure is 'to go over his life' and the women whom he loved and who made trouble for him: his sterling and capable Aunt; his wonderfully vulgar second wife Bella; Molly, a music-hall singing sister; and Effie, his first and hopeless wife. Silas is the only one left who knows exactly what is shoring up his family. And now he sits, waiting and thinking, just wondering what it would be like if he were to say ...