THE BALLROOM

A RICHARD AND JUDY BOOK CLUB PICK AUTUMN 2016

‘Absolutely heart-breaking. One of the best books I’ve ever read’ DINAH JEFFERIES, author of The Tea-Planter’s Wife

‘Compelling, elegant and insightful’ Observer
‘Beautifully wrought, tender, heartbreaking’ Sunday Express 5/5
‘Moving, fascinating’ Times
‘A tender and absorbing love story’ Daily Mail

‘Unsentimental and affecting’ Sunday Times

‘Exquisitely good’ Metro

1911: Inside an asylum at the edge of the Yorkshire moors,
where men and women are kept apart
by high walls and barred windows,
there is a ballroom vast and beautiful.
For one bright evening every week
they come together
and dance.
When John and Ella meet
It is a dance that will change
two lives forever.

Set over the heatwave summer of 1911, the end of the Edwardian era, THE BALLROOM is a historical love story. It tells a page-turning tale of dangerous obsession, of madness and sanity, and of who gets to decide which is which.