Then And Us demonstrates how Champion can produce a novel with a natural, very 'real' style, complementing the touchingly brave and awkward not-so-long-ago world of young adulthood battling their own and class-divided emotions. With its setting and tonal range reminding one of Waugh - at times an almost anti-Brideshead Revisited - the dialogue, setting, and characters are so well-placed in their time, and Champion's more usual ideological polemics are nicely tucked into the mouths of the pedagogues, leaving the characters to breath, and speak to us movingly.
