This month World Book Club comes from the FT Weekend Oxford Literary Festival in the elegant surroundings of The Mathematical Institute, part of the university, and we’re talking to the highly acclaimed British author Tessa Hadley about her award-winning novel The Past.

Over three long, hot summer weeks four siblings and their children assemble at their country house for a family reunion, where simmering tensions and secrets come to a head.

Tessa Hadley skillfully evokes a brewing storm of lust and envy, the indelible connections of memory and affection, the fierce, nostalgic beauty of the natural world, and the shifting currents of history running beneath the surface of these seemingly steady lives.

(Picture: Tessa Hadley. Photo credit; Mark Vessey.)