Post-university life doesn’t suit Phyl. Time passes slowly living back home with her parents, working a zero-hour contract serving Japanese food to holidaymakers at Heathrow’s Terminal 5.

As for her budding plans of becoming a writer, those are going nowhere. That is, until family friend Chris comes to stay. He’s been on the path to uncover a sinister think-tank, founded at Cambridge University in the 1980s, that’s been scheming to push the British government in a more extreme direction. One that’s finally poised to put their plans into action.

But speaking truth to power can be dangerous - and power will stop at nothing to stay on top. As Britain finds itself under the leadership of a new Prime Minister whose tenure will only last for seven weeks, Chris pursues his story to a conference being held deep in the Cotswolds, where events take a sinister turn and a murder enquiry is soon in progress. But will the solution to the mystery lie in contemporary politics, or in a literary enigma that is almost forty years old?

Darting between decades and genres, Jonathan Coe's latest novel THE PROOF OF MY INNOCENCE is a wickedly funny and razor-sharp new novel from one of Britain’s most beloved novelists, showing how the key to understanding the present can often be found in the murkiest corners of the past.

Jonathan's work has received many prizes and awards, including both Costa Novel of the Year and Prix du Livre Européen for Middle England. In France he won the Prix Médicis for The House of Sleep and has been appointed Officier de l’ordre des arts et des lettres. In Italy he has also won the Premio Flaiano (for Number 11) and the Premio Bauer-Ca’ Foscari. The citation for the latter prize concluded that ‘for his keen interest in the most crucial issues of contemporary civilization, Jonathan Coe may be considered a complete novelist and a classic of our times’.

On this episode, Jonathan meets Jack at North Sea Fish in Bloomsbury, London

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