January 1987. Alix Bowen has moved away from London to Yorkshire. There, she regularly visits a mass-murderer in a high-security prison. But has her natural curiosity in his motives and character crept into obsession?

Meanwhile, Alix’s life continues to cross and uncross with her old friends Liz and Esther, now all in their fifties. As the years pass, they increasingly question the brutally prosperous and atrocity-hungry society they live in, and their complicity in it, as they navigate life in 1980s Britain.

The second in a trilogy following on from The Radiant Way and finishing with The Gates of Ivory, A Natural Curiosity sees Margaret Drabble return with her brilliant and dark wit in this bold, generous and incisive portrait of the time.