During the WW2, Ben, a child evacuee in a mining village in Yorkshire, finds crayons in the cold attic of his grandma’s tiny cottage. He also finds an old gramophone with a record of Puccini’s opera on its turn-table. While the bombing and the blackouts are going on outside, the little boy learns how to draw pictures and how to charm his tyrannical grandma by singing like the Italian tenor in Puccini’s opera. That’s how art and charm become linked in the personality of a great artist and a charmer who as a young artist chose to live in a remote house deep in the Cornish wilderness, rejecting the fast, mechanic, standardised solutions of the contemporary life and monogamy. Women are easily charmed by his rich humour, his generosity and his ability to spin stories into vivid realities. But certainty of an attachment is alien to him and he can only relate to women as long they stimulate his artistic drive, and share his pleasures. One day, while in an art colony in Germany, he meets Elsa, a poet and a non-conformist accustomed to live and create in uncertainty. “In this philosophical yet highly accessible novel, Ana Ingham sets out to show that art and love are – in essence – the same thing.” Barry Stewart Hunter (UK) “I was in the hands of an author who could move me a great deal.” Bob Corbett (USA) “This is a well-constructed book, ambitious, striving for a depth of content as severe as is found in the novels of Thomas Hardy and Joseph Conrad.” John Tungay (UK) It is a treasure through the forest of emotions that bedevil a descent into Hell – torment – yet emerges into Heaven. David de Pinna (UK) About the Author Ana Ingham, the award-winning author of sixteen internationally published novels, eight plays and five screenplays, lives currently in Oxford. www.anaingham.com www.Facebook.com/AnaIngham The painting 'Mediterranean Head' by Bryan Ingham