Safe Houses is a novel but it is written so convincingly as a memoir, an unusually unsettling and poignant one, that it reads like thinly disguised autobiography. David Pryce-Jones, an eminent historian, novelist and commentator, keeps the reader guessing how closely the narrator’s unconventional childhood, spent before and during the Second World War, resembles his own. The intermingling of imaginary and real characters, as well as the acutely observed period detail, brings a particular authenticity to the author’s vivid evocation of an era.

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