Please note the venue for tonight’s event: St Mary’s Church Bathwick, Darlington Street, Bath, BA2 4EB. Some earlier vouchers (which will still be valid) were printed with an incorrect venue.
Ian McEwan is a critically acclaimed author of short stories and novels, and over the years has collected many awards including the Somerset Maugham Award for his collection of short stories First Love, Last Rites, the Whitbread Novel of the Year Award for his novel The Child in Time, and the Booker Prize for Amsterdam. His other, enormously successful works include Atonement, Enduring Love, Solar and Sweet Tooth.
His latest novel, The Children Act, follows Fiona Maye – a leading High Court judge, renowned for her fierce intelligence, exactitude and sensitivity. But beneath her professional success lies her private sorrow of childlessness and a marriage of thirty years that is now in crisis. At the same time, she is called on to try an urgent case: for religious reasons, Adam, 17, is refusing the medical treatment that could save his life, and his devout parents share his wishes. Fiona is forced to reconcile her own beliefs with the competing powers of the secular courts, and the boy’s faith.