A wickedly funny clever but also tender and lyrical novel about Britain and Britishness and what we have become RACHEL JOYCEIn Bournville a placid suburb of Birmingham sits a famous chocolate factory. For elevenyearold Mary and her family in 1945 its the centre of the world. The reason their streets smell faintly of chocolate the place where most of their friends and neighbours have worked for decades. Mary will go on to live through the Coronation and the World Cup final royal weddings and royal funerals Brexit and Covid19. Shell have children and grandchildren and greatgrandchildren. Parts of the chocolate factory will be transformed into a theme park as modern life and the city crowd in on their peaceful enclave.As we travel through seventyfive years of social change from James Bond to Princess Diana and from wartime nostalgia to the World Wide Web one pressing question starts to emerge will these changing times bring Marys family and their country closer together or leave them more adrift and divided than ever beforeA beautiful and often very funny tribute to an underexamined place and also a truly moving story of how a country discovered tolerance Sathnam Sanghera bestselling author of EmpirelandA hugely impressive stateofthenation tale ObserverThis charming read is as warming rich and comforting as a mug of hot chocolate The TimesWritten with his signature wit Jonathan Coes unmissable new novel The Proof of My Innocence is available to order now