Welcome Strangers

In this complex and satisfying conclusion to Hocking's trilogy the war is over, and the warriors have returned from their far-flung adventures.

But London is bleak and grey, and Alice feels stifled by her job in local government.

Both her sisters are married, and their widowed mother has a new husband and a new, rural life.

With the savage winter of 1946-47 come the first icy intimations of the Cold War, and the betrayal that will darken the lives of friends who have known each other since schooldays.