Novelist Michael Arditti’s award-winning work features a wide range of protagonists drawn from ancient and recent history, and also from contemporary life. His latest title is The Choice and is set in the present day. It introduces the reader to Clarissa Phipps, a middle-aged female priest who came late to being able to pursue her vocation, and whose ministry is in a picturesque, tightly-knit rural parish where conflicts and tensions might at first sight seem subdued or even trivial, but which are still very much there.
St Peter’s, the church of which Clarissa is rector, is a beautiful mediaeval building, and in it is displayed a series of more recent paintings by a local artist. Seward Wemlock’s private life
