Something extraordinary happened to the UK literary scene in the 1980s. A new wave of talented young novelists appeared in the space of five years, challenging the Establishment writers whose heyday had been the 1950s. While a score of ageing British authors still roamed the plains in the 1980s, a generation of young British writers took the literary novel into new realms of setting, subject matter and style. It began with two names - Martin Amis and Ian McEwan - and, in a very few years, became a flood. With these ground-breaking new ideas came the inevitable controversies, the climax of which came in the form of a death sentence from an Islamic leader who became, literally, the world's most lethal critic.
The Golden Page will offer a personal record of this explosive turning point from John Walsh, a journalist who was in all the right places at all the right times.
