Tim Pears

"This overwhelmingly hot summer everything seems to be slowing down in the tiny Devon village where Alison lives, as if the sun is pouring hot glue over it. 'This idn't nothin',' says Alison's grandmother, recalling a drought when the earth swallowed lambs, and the summer after the war when people got electric shocks …

'Early nineteenth-century France had Balzac, we have Tim Pears' The Times For John, a potato isn't just a staple food, it's also something wondrous, the secret of his success and the key to the future. With his brother, Greg, he has turned his father's greengrocery business into Spudnik, Britain's largest dealer in …