David Hartley Milnes

The Prodigal David Hartley Milnes

In a dark night of the soul a bourgeois citizen runs away from home: his life has been a waste, a lie, a wilful delusion, and he must cast himself out from the provinces, and from the world.
     Months later, recovery begins in the drab and punitive solitude of a derelict Notting Hill villa, but no sooner has he begun to enjoy it than a pre-Thatcherite workers' cooperative storms the place and lays waste his peace and quiet. The workers are led by a minor aristocrat from the other side of Regent's Park.
    Live and let live, the citizen says, the citizen pleads.
    But no. The workers cannot do that. He must be saved, or he must be damned.