The Perfect Golden Circle

Selected for BBC 2 Between the Covers 2022

The BBC Radio 2 Book Club pick

Longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize 2022

'In this folksy, magnetic tale, two outsiders seek healing and enlightenment by creating crop formations in a Wiltshire field ... A memorable hymn to beauty' OBSERVER

'The pleasures of this bountiful novel are like a glass of cool water on a parched summer day' THE TIMES

‘A spirited and anarchic novel... a roiling, rollicking crop-circle folk tale’ GUARDIAN

England, 1989. Over the course of a burning hot summer, two very different men – traumatised Falklands veteran Calvert, and affable, chaotic Redbone – set out nightly in a clapped-out camper van to undertake an extraordinary project.

Under cover of darkness, the two men traverse the fields of rural England in secret, forming crop circles in elaborate and mysterious patterns. As the summer wears on, and their designs grow ever more ambitious, the two men find that their work has become a cult international sensation – and that an unlikely and beautiful friendship has taken root as the wheat ripens from green to gold.

Moving and exhilarating, tender and slyly witty, The Perfect Golden Circle is a captivating novel about the futility of war, the destruction of the English countryside, class inequality – and the power of beauty to heal trauma and fight power.

'Brilliantly constructed and steeped in rural atmosphere' FINANCIAL TIMES, Best summer books of 2022