The Day That Went Missing

A memoir of real truth and heartbreaking emotional heft * Sunday Times *This captivating book, both heart-rending and jaw-dropping, unfolds like a detective story * Daily Mail *A touching, painful disquisition on memory and forgetting and the tendrils that tie us to the past – Caroline Moorehead * Guardian *Clear-eyed, very sad, funny at times and, despite the story it tells, ultimately uplifting in its determination to confront buried truths. * Sebastian Faulks *A masterpiece * Craig Brown *A devastating forage into memory and the brutality of the stiff upper lip – Evie Wyld * Observer *What a wonderful book about tragedy, the tricks that memory plays on us all, and the bottomless capacity for denial that lies at the heart of a public school upbringing. I was quite undone by it - and also surprised, at times, by eruptions of laughter. For it proves, if proof is needed, that there’s nothing stranger than a conventional English family – Deborah MoggachA compelling autobiography showing the need to erase an early tragedy and the necessity, many years later, to discover what exactly happened. This is an unforgettable family story that explores human nature and involves us all – Michael HolroydI read nothing this year that I admired quite as much – Tom Holland * New Statesman *This is an absorbing, unsettling and at times painfully difficult read but by the end of the book it is clear that Richard found it cathartic to dig up the past. His story is an important examination of grief and denial and the huge damage caused by the idea that feelings and emotions are something best packed away and ignored – Mernie Gilmore * Daily Express *

Richard Beard is the author of Acts of the Assassins which was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize and most recently, The Day That Went Missing. In the twenty years since his first book he has published critically acclaimed novels and narrative non-fiction, including Becoming Drusilla, the story of how a friendship between two men was changed by a gender transition. He was formerly director of the National Academy of Writing in London, and is now a visiting professor at the University of Tokyo and has a Creative Writing Fellowship at the University of East Anglia. He is an optimistic opening batsman for the Authors Cricket Club.