C. P. (Charles Percy) Snow

A young man resolves to rise above his humble beginnings in the series praised as a "masterwork . . . a panorama of middle and upper-middle class English society" (The New York Times). Nine-year-old Lewis Eliot learns that his father is bankrupt in the summer of 1914. This family crisis-and the tragedy that follows-shape his future, but with fierce willpower, he diligently studies and eventually finds a promising law career in London. However,...

Winner of the James Tait Black Prize: An "engrossing" novel of power, politics, and academic rivalry in 1930s England (The New York Times). In 1937, the dark cloud of Nazi Germany hangs over Europe. Meanwhile, barrister Lewis Eliot is comfortably settled at Cambridge College, which is currently astir thanks to the imminent death of an ailing master. Little does the dying master know that two men are already jockeying for his position. Eliot and...

A brush with death may finally bring a father and son together, in the conclusion to the award-winning, decades-spanning series. Sir Lewis Eliot has made his way from a deprived childhood to knighthood, but when he experiences cardiac arrest during surgery, his thoughts turn to the meaning of it all. As he considers a life spent in the realms of law, government, and academia, he can't refrain from passing judgment on himself. Yet amid his melancholy...

An academic is accused of fraud in this novel set in 1950s England by "an extremely shrewd observer of men and society" (Commentary). At Lewis Eliot's Cambridge college, Dr. Donald Howard is not well liked. Some believe his research to be subpar, and his far-left politics off-putting. So no one much mourns when Howard is fired for committing academic fraud. Eliot, though, is disturbed when new information seems to throw doubt on the don's guilt,...

With England on the brink of disruptive social change, a man revisits his past-and confronts a monstrous crime-in this novel of "clarity and perceptiveness" (The Atlantic). In his late middle age, semi-retired Lewis Eliot, accompanied by his teenage son, journeys to the provincial town where he spent his poverty-stricken boyhood-and where his father is now dying. The London of the 1960s is changing, and this visit is a reminder of the passage...

Winner of the James Tait Black Prize: Two brothers find themselves at odds amid Britain's quest for an atomic weapon, in this vivid historical novel. As the Second World War begins to rage, Britain's brightest minds put their efforts into the development of atomic munitions, laboring away in a closely guarded research station in a Warwickshire village. Lewis Eliot, in a stint as a civil servant, gets his brother, Martin, a position there. But...

C P Snow's sketches of famous physicists and explanation of how atomic weapons were developed gives an overview of science often lacking. This study provides us with hope for the future as well as anecdotes from history.

This story told in the first person starts with a child's interest in the night sky. A telescope starts a lifetime's interest in science. The narrator goes up to King's College, London to study. As a fellow at Cambridge he embarks on love affairs and searches for love at the same time as career success. Finally, contentment in love exhausts his passion for research.