Simon: A Decline and Fall of the English Landed Gentry

1957. Gorgeous, 23-year-old Simon, heir to a peerage, meets and falls in love with a Cumbrian sheep farmer, disappointing his parents and flying in the face of the social mores of a period when gay relationships risked a life prison sentence. Told from the perspective of his lover who acts as narrator throughout, the story encompasses their relationship over a fifty year period spanning their first meeting, when post-war optimism is fast being replaced by decay, to 2007 when the couple can finally validate their relationship publicly in a Civil Partnership ceremony. In between we are treated to a cast of delightful characters - Simon's myopic and hidebound parents determined to see their son married to a rich, eligible debutante; Harry, his younger brother, - the 'spare', who also turns out to be gay and the riotous drunken fortune-teller, Madame Claire Voyante, who takes great delight in informing Simon of the skeletons in the family closet.