'A wickedly funny clever but also tender and lyrical novel about Britain and Britishness and
what we have become' RACHEL JOYCE In Bournville a placid suburb of Birmingham sits a famous
chocolate factory. For eleven-year-old Mary and her family in 1945 it's 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 Covid-19. She'll have
children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. 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 seventy-five 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 Mary's family - and their country - closer together or leave them
more adrift and divided than ever before? ***** 'A 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 Empireland 'A hugely impressive state-of-the-nation
tale' Observer 'This charming read is as warming rich and comforting as a mug of hot
chocolate' The Times Written with his signature wit Jonathan Coe's unmissable new novel
The Proof of My Innocence is available to order now!
