Jonathan Heawood

Adam Thorpe’s first novel, Ulverton (1992), was set in a fictional downland village, and traced its history from 17th-century isolation to M4 dormitory town. Thorpe told the story of this small English utopia in a mixture of letters, diaries and interviews. Each of the 12 sections of the novel is written in a different idiom, and can be read as a short story. The first is the narrative...