NUNC!

Jerusalem is ruled by rosemary-scented King Herod. By the bougainvillea in Deuteronomy Square, Reuben's tea stall keeps customers sweet with lemon koloochehs. Onesimus the greengrocer piles his polished pears and pineapples in ziggurats, blind harpist Tabitha captivates bachelor Pharisees, Roman sentries doze and the widower Simeon, beset by gout and befriended by a dog called Shlomo, watches the passing promenade. By day Simeon dodges bossy superintendent Kedar. By starlit night he contemplates lost loves and the visits of a bad-tempered angel.

Quentin Letts's delightful tales bring first-century Jerusalem to quirky life and show how the prophet Simeon, whose Nunc Dimittis became one of the great canticles of Christendom, can help an ailing twenty-first-century Englishman come to terms with his fate.

Nunc! is a gracious yet beautifully navigated meditation on life, love and death.

A rollicking satire that emits flashes of real brilliance Daily Mail
Heartfelt The Times
Letts can be as funny as P.G. Wodehouse, but there's real poignancy running through this story Tablet, Novel of the week

Quentin Letts is the political sketch writer for the Daily Mail. A regular broadcaster on radio and television, he was formerly New York correspondent and parliamentary sketch writer for The Times, gossip columnist for the Daily Telegraph and theatre critic for the Sunday Times. He is the author of the Sunday Times bestseller 50 People Who Buggered Up Britain. His hobbies are gossip, hymn-singing and cricket. He lives in rural Hertfordshire.

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