FANS OF JOHN Murray's work, on seeing that he has a new book out, will know what they are in for, and rejoice. Readers who are new to him would do well to start with Murphy's Favourite Channels. In Murray's earlier novel John Dory a man falls in love with a fish. And Radio Activity describes itself as 'A Cumbrian Tale in Five Emissions' (come awn?).

It's the broadcasting theme that Murray returns to here. He uses it to tie together the two contrasting, but linked, parts of his novel. In alternating chapters, the narrator discusses his West Cumbrian boyhood and his later life, dominated less by four Med marriages than by his falling in love