Beyond This Horizon - Softcover

Thompson, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1908956003 ISBN 13: 9781908956002

Publisher: Last Passage, 2012

Synopsis

Beautifully crafted, Beyond This Horizon explores the timeless themes of friendship, art, love and loss. Above all the human spirit endures. This emotionally charged story plots the relationships of a close-knit group of individuals who irrevocably change one another s destiny. Thomas Arthur Taylor, known to everyone as Tat, is the first of his family to spread his wings and leave the Upper Eden Valley in Cumbria. He is clever, excels at rugby and has a fine singing voice. From Appleby Grammar school he gains a place at University College London, to study law, shortly after the First World War. Unexpectedly, Tat mixes with art students from the Slade School, who introduce him to a world he never knew existed. One of these, Jane Cranshaw, a beautiful upper class girl, is a medal winning painting student. Tat secretly carries a torch for her. Eventually, to his surprise and delight, Jane invites him to spend the weekend with her at her flat in Fulham, after a heady night of drinking. They fall in love and seem to be perfectly matched. Tat is unaware that Jane has a dark side and is on the rebound from a passionate affair. As a consequence, the apparent innocence of the relationship between the young couple is fatally overshadowed. Nothing in Tat s background prepares him for what is to come. Their seemingly idyllic relationship is torn apart by a succession of emotional hammer blows, which plunge Tat and his best friend Olly Sinclair, into a whirlwind of barely controllable turmoil. Astonishingly, it is his powerful base-baritone singing voice, which has matured into a true phenomenon, that proves to be his salvation. Because of this, out of the blue, Tat is offered a leading role in Verdi s Requiem, to be performed in public, when he becomes involved with the College Choral Society. He is coached for the part by the choir master. To his delight members of his family are able to attend the second of these concerts. Suffused with pride and exhilaration, he senses that after all, there is hope and redemption within his grasp. Beyond This Horizon - when the greatest loss of all is that of innocence.

About this title

About the Author

David Thompson is a professional sculptor born in 1939 and brought up in Kirkby Stephen. He attended Appleby Grammar School as a boarder with his two older brothers. He studied at Carlisle College of Art, specializing in sculpture, followed by three years as a postgraduate student at The Slade School of Fine Art, part of University College, London. His career includes numerous solo and group exhibitions, public and private commissions, with eleven years of unbroken exhibiting activity in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. David became a full time tutor in the sculpture department at The Kent Institute of Art and Design in Canterbury in 1970 and took early retirement as a senior lecturer in 1989 in order to concentrate upon his own work. His chosen material is stone. Twelve years ago he moved to Nottinghamshire after living in and around Canterbury for almost 30 years. He is married to Rebecca, a primary school teacher, and they have two sons. David has three children from a previous marriage. Beyond This Horizon is his first novel. A sequel to this book is planned which will take the central character, Thomas Arthur Taylor, to active service as an army captain, just in time to participate in the bloody battle for Hong Kong and suffer almost four years as a POW under the Japanese. Problems await him on his return to Cumbria. This book will be called, An Inherited Voice .

Edition details

• Publisher: Last Passage
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1908956003
• ISBN 13: 9781908956002
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 404