This is an edited version of the lecture given on 27 October 2022 at the AGM of the Trollope Society in the Reform Club. One hundred and forty years ago this December, the Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope died laughing over...

“There is no money, and the Bredins can’t afford to divorce.” The first four words opening my new novel, The Lie of the Land, come from a famous note left by a Minister in the last Labour government to the...