Excerpt from In Memoriam by Alice Winn, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"It's a form of magic, all this," said Ellwood, walking on. "Cricket and hunting and ices on the lawn on summer afternoons. England is magic."

Gaunt had a feeling he knew what Ellwood was going to say next.

"That's why we've got to fight for it."

Ellwood's England was magical, thought Gaunt, picking his way around nettles. But it wasn't England. Gaunt had been to the East End once, when his mother took him to give soup and bread to Irish weavers. There had been no cricket or hunting or ices, there. But Ellwood had never been interested in ugliness, whereas Gaunt—because of Maud, perhaps, because she read Bernard Shaw and Bertrand Russell and wrote mad things about the colonies in her letters—feared that ugliness was too important to ignore.

"Do you remember the Peloponnesian War?" said Gaunt.

Ellwood let out a breathy laugh. "Honestly, Gaunt, I don't know why I bother with you. We skipped prep so that we wouldn't have to think about Thucydides."

"Athens was the greatest power in Europe, perhaps even the world. They had democracy, art, splendid architecture. But Sparta was almost as powerful. Not quite, but close enough. And Sparta was militaristic."

"Is this a parable, Gaunt? Are you Christ?"

"And so the Athenians fought the Spartans."

"And they lost," said Ellwood, kicking at a rotting log.

"Yes."

Ellwood didn't answer for a long time.

"We won't lose," he said, finally. "We're the greatest empire that's ever been."

They were in Hundreds the first time they got drunk together. Gaunt was sixteen and Ellwood fifteen. Pritchard had somehow—"at great personal cost," he told them darkly—convinced his older brother to give him five bottles of cheap whisky. They locked themselves in the bathroom at the top of Cemetery House: Pritchard, West, Roseveare, Ellwood, and Gaunt. Ellwood, Gaunt later discovered, had insisted on buying his bottle off Pritchard. Ellwood had a morbid fear of being perceived as miserly.

West spat his first mouthful of whisky into the sink. He was a big-eared, clumsy, disastrous sort of person: stupid at lessons, average at games, a cheerful failure.

"Christ alive! That's abominable stuff," he said. His tie was crooked. It always was, no matter how many times he was punished for sloppiness.

"Keep drinking," advised Roseveare, from his lazy position on the floor. Gaunt glanced at him and noticed with some irritation that, even dishevelled, he was immaculate. He was the youngest of three perfect Roseveare boys, each more exemplary than the last, and he was good-looking in a careless, gilded way that Gaunt resented.

"I quite like it," said Ellwood, turning his bottle to look at the label. "Perhaps I shall develop a habit. I think Byron had a habit."

"So do monks," said Gaunt.

"That was nearly funny, Gaunt," said Roseveare encouragingly. "You'll get there."

Gaunt took a swig of whisky. He didn't much like the taste, but it made him feel light, as if people weren't looking at him. Or, perhaps, it made him feel as if he shouldn't mind it if they did. He climbed into the bathtub and sank out of sight, clutching the bottle to his chest.

Excerpted from In Memoriam by Alice Winn. Copyright © 2023 by Alice Winn. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.