Growing up fatherless in Vauxhall in the 1860s and working in a porcelain factory, young Tom Bedlam doesn't have it easy. Yet he is a positive spirit, cunning in his pursuit of love and a steadfast friend. Everything changes when his perfidious father turns up, followed by the revelation that Tom had an older brother, who disappeared at birth. Tom's desire to find him and unite his family proves an elusive but compelling quest. Sent to a boarding school where he learns the power of the ambitious over the meek, Tom makes a Faustian pact that will haunt his adult life, as he strives to be the husband and parent his father was not. Ranging from London to South Africa, from the Boer War to the final months of the First World War, Tom Bedlam captures the spirit of the times as it portrays a man wrestling with his loyalties, affections and conscience -- until he realises that the simple bonds of family can prevail against human folly and the march of progress. Dramatic, whimsical and shot through with lively humour, this is a novel as beguiling as it is affecting.