[This novel is in nine long chapters. I read a couple at a time, then wrote about what I’d read before reading on. Spoiler alert: If you read this running commentary, you will find out everything that happens in the book as I read it.] 

10 July 2025
1944 and 1946-53
What do I think of this so far? It’s readable, the characters are sympathetic, and Sarah Winman likes to bring in interesting stuff to keep things lively. This is easy enough on a single day in the 1944 section, set in Italy as the Allies press north to Florence and beyond. But not much happens at all in London for the first seven years after the war, so Winman gives us highlights to keep us reading. It’s episodic, but it means we can see things from different characters’ points of view. But mostly we’re with Ulysses Temper—his name comes in useful later—a likeable, generous chap not really going anywhere with his job helping at the pub he lives above. Luckily for him, Sarah Winman needs him to have an unimaginable stroke of good fortune in 1953, so—and I’m not making this up—at the end of these chapters he’s off to live the dream in his own apartment in the middle of Florence. He’s setting off with his young daughter as the chapter ends, wondering why the likeable old ‘Cressy’ hasn’t waved him off. Then there’s a shout. ‘Cressy running towards them with his suitcases, desert shorts flapping. Wait! he was shouting. Wait! I changed my mind!’

If it sounds a little like those human-interest TV dramas like Call the Midwife, I don’t think that’s accidental. (The title popped into my head when I read that Winman had a minor role in it.) Gritty things happen, but there are enough salt-of-the-earth characters to see them all through. And there are other sorts of characters to add a bit of spice, and a parrot called Claude—what else would he be called?—to make the occasional apposite, or hilariously inappropriate comment.

I sound as if I don’t like it, despite Winman’s skill at creating situations and characters. And there’s a fairly unusual mix of classes. We start with the middle classes during the Allied advance, with the engaging art historian Evelyn Somebody being bored almost to death by a woman she’s gone with. It’s 1944 in a small guesthouse not too far from Florence, and the British are coming. She meets Ulysses accidentally, hitching a lift in the army car he’s driving. And despite every difference in the world between them—she’s a gay, university-educated sixty-something while he’s a 20-year-old Eastender missing his wife—they hit it off immediately. That’s what people do in the Winman universe, hit it off, especially if Ulysses is involved. He’s already hit it off with Darnley, the gay art-loving captain he drives around, and…

…and Winman does what she does with her characters. Darnley and Evelyn both love Florence with the kind of wistful romantic passion only the English of that time and class were capable of, and he seems to know as much about Renaissance art as she does. And don’t they just love Florence? They both seem to have visited as often as they could before the war—and the happy mixture of their shared enthusiasm and Ulysses’ openness to everything makes him realise there’s a whole world he knows little or nothing about. Wouldn’t it be lovely if he could somehow…? But don’t be ridiculous. After a little episode designed only, I wrongly assumed, to warm the reader’s heart—Ulysses saves the occupant of an apartment from suicide by climbing selflessly on to the roof—by the beginning of the second chapter he’s arriving back in the same old grimy East End of London he left six years before. Ah well. But he’s alive, relatively unscathed—he has a scar above his lip—and, being Ulysses, ready to take whatever life throws at him. That’s what he’s like…

…as we see straight way. He always knew his wife Peg was too glamorous for him, and isn’t at all surprised to hear that she’s no longer occupying their rooms at the pub. He’s a little more taken aback that she’s pregnant by an American she is convinced will return one day, but he’s OK with it. Sure, he will aways love her, but knows she never loved him the same way even before they were married. And for the next seven years they are friendly, and are even capable of an occasional affectionate shag for old times’ sake. But it’s hardly fulfilling.

And nor is any of his life. Winman lets the years skip by, but if Ulysses has any deeply felt ambition to make something of his life, we don’t get to hear about it. The long, freezing winter of 1947 comes and goes, as does the famous smog of 1951, and I get the feeling that Winman is much happier to hang any narrative interest on external events than on some kind of interior motivation or conflict. Or she can give one of the five named characters at the pub something to do. These all have their own signature quirks. Peg is forthright, tough, meltingly attractive and sings like an angel. Col, the landlord, is irascible to the point of misanthropy, and still can’t believe his wife left him. He has a grown-up daughter, Ginny, brain-damaged but so lovably child-like she can be a danger to herself—and Peg feels able to show her the loving protection she can’t show anybody else. Including her own growing daughter Alys, or ‘Kid,’ as tough as Peg but with her own startling individuality. It’s another gift laid at her characters’ feet by this inveterately kindly author.

Then there’s Cress, the shy, likeable would-be autodidact, spreading interesting facts like other people spread gossip; Pete, the depressive, gifted but unfulfilled pub pianist keeping his sexuality under wraps; and Claude, the parrot who seems to have escaped from a Hanna-Barbera cartoon. Between them, and Peg, and Col, and Ulysses himself, it isn’t too hard for Winman to spin things out for the seven years of this second chapter. But some time before we get to the Coronation of 1953—which, inevitably, we do—there comes the only bit of plot development in the novel so far. Ginny’s loving innocence finally leads to her becoming pregnant, and Col—bless—wrecks his own pub in his anger. But the others put it back together again because, well, it’s in their Winman-endowed DNA…

…but Col is still intransigent in his anger, and gets the local wide-boy and fixer to find out who the father is, and to get him. He didn’t mean murder, but takes it in his stride when a body arrives on his doorstep on the first night of the pea-souper fog. Ulysses and one of the pub’s other reliable sorts—they’re all reliable sorts—help him bury the body in Epping Forest. The police are asking around, because—long-awaited jeopardy alert—the infamous Kray twins know the dead man’s cousin (I think)… but, as ever in this novel, the danger passes as soon as it arrives. Winman just hasn’t got the heart to give any of her characters a truly hard time. Or if she does, like Ulysses’ seven years of grey monotony, rather than mention it she’ll get one of loveable pub regulars to create a diversion.

My heart sank when a solicitor arrives to tell Ulysses that his kindly act in saving the life of Arturo, the would-be suicide in Florence—and restoring his will to live—has brought its own reward. Arturo has left everything to him, including his apartment. Ah, I thought, it’s that sort of feelgood novel is it? Will this author really carry on stretching credibility beyond breaking-point to bring about the next stage of her ‘wouldn’t it be lovely if…’ fantasy?

1953-4, 1954-9 and 1960
Yes, she does. Carry on stretching credibility, so that ‘the gang’—her word—can carry on living the dream. In fact, the subtitle of 1953-4 is The Stuff of Dreams (and I notice 1960, a couple of chapters further on, is La Dolce Vita. Sometimes I feel Winman wants to reassure us we don’t need to worry—but this isn’t the dark Neorealism of the movies they go and see, it’s a world where everything that could possibly go right does go right. Any little problems turn out not to be problems at all when everybody pulls together or they get another lucky break…. It’s finally come to me that what Winman does is use the form and tropes of comedy—happy chances, problems quickly overcome—without the actual laughs.

Following Cressy’s comic chase after Ulysses and Alys as they set off, the journey is as you would expect. Some minor misadventures always lead to some happy outcome or other. I can’t remember what mistimed comment leads French Customs to search the car, just as I can’t remember how they ended up with a free car in the first place, but the customs men are so busy finding nothing they forget to look inside Cressy’s suitcase. And guess what—he’s read up how to drug poultry for transit, and has brought Claude with him. Will they be able to revive him? Guess.

They are met in Florence by a local lawyer, Massimo and, of course, he’s almost impossibly helpful and friendly. He even has comedy hair that sticks out from his head. Then, ‘Soldato,’ whisper the locals as they recognise Ulysses on the way to the apartment—they’re on his side even before he arrives, rather than annoyed about his lucky acquisition. And the property is lovely, bigger than Ulysses dreamed of—there are four bedrooms!—and only when rooms are allocated to all of them does Massimo tell him there’s another floor below. The stuff of dreams? They’ve only just begun. This little corner of the city provides an almost ready-made community, like the pub only without Col and the grimy dampness of London. And without Peg, of course, who had told Ulysses he would be much better for Alys than she would. Alys shows all the signs of agreeing with her, having bonded with him almost from birth and, of course, Ulysses loves her as he would a daughter.  

Is it all plain sailing? Just about, Massimo carefully guiding them past any possible pitfalls. Like, when Ulysses says getting a phone would be a good idea—he has to use Massimo’s to keep in touch with Peg—Massimo suggests not. The locals already know there’s a refrigerator in the flat—everybody else uses the one at the (friendly) local café if they need something keeping cold—although they don’t blame Ulysses for this bit of luck. But a phone? Better to wait, it’ll be OK soon enough…. And meanwhile Alys is loving it, and even gets over the horror of having to start school. She doesn’t make troops of friends, but she holds her own. Of course she does, although Winman doesn’t go into exactly how she does it. Sheer force of will, probably. Meanwhile Cressy is endlessly useful—‘I couldn’t have done it without you, Cress’—and is quietly accepted by the ladies who sit on the marble benches in the square. And Ulysses seems to be OK, although Winman doesn’t make a big thing of it. And Claude the parrot makes comments from his perch on the head of the statue above the fountain, clearly in his element. They’re all in their element.

But Winman knows from the start that this lifestyle will need paying for when Arturo’s bit of money runs out. Cressy’s all right—I forgot to mention that he staked all his money on an unlikely bet in 1948 that we knew would bring him a windfall before he did. Could Fanny Blankers-Koen possibly win four Olympic golds? Of course she could. Thanks, Fanny—and thanks Sarah Winman, again. I can’t remember how she now slides a new idea into someone’s head, that of converting the lower floor of the apartment into what will soon be, no doubt, the friendliest pensione in Florence. Perhaps it’s Cressy who thinks of it, having read A Room with a View and ditched what had been his bible in Florence, his well-thumbed Baedeker. Massimo makes himself useful, as ever, advising how to set up the business side while Cressy helps Ulysses to work out what they will need. How hard can it be?

Not hard at all, but they need another stroke of good fortune to make it run properly. Des Bambridge and his wife Poppy are two of the first guests. He’s a Manchester manufacturer, loves the pensione and, as a favour to his new friend he works out everything Ulysses needs to put it on a proper business footing. And the icing on the cake is that he will be able to make some moulds for Ulysses when he gets home, because he’s already made a fortune in the injection moulding of plastics. But don’t worry, at heart he’s the helpful, bluff Northerner, so that’s all right. Before Des’s happy arrival, Ulysses had been getting up to speed reviving his half-learned globe-making skills, using his father’s etched templates. He’s been trying and failing to make moulds of his own from plaster of Paris—but with Des’s moulds he can place the ‘gores,’ the longitudinal strips of paper used in the process, in perfect position.

Meanwhile, unexpectedly, their lives are slowly drifting towards disaster. Only joking. In fact, everything is going so well I sometimes had to stop reading because of the sheer schmaltziness of it all. Cressy very, very slowly builds up his own confidence with the old Italian ladies. Until now he has always dressed like a first-time tourist, but he buys a new outfit, picks up his knitting, and goes down to sit in his usual place. Do the ladies mock him and his sissy ways? What do you think? And one of them sits ever closer to him whenever there’s enough room. There’s always enough room.

Is this before or after their introduction to yet another slice of la dolce vita? Does it matter? Massimo invites them to his little place on an island off the coast and, I’ll leave you to imagine the details of their glorious two weeks. He takes the first of what will become an annual group photo, to be framed and put on the wall. And Massimo’s sexuality, finally, is finding a creative outlet. He is becoming more confident, has had an accidental haircut that looks great, and starts to dress even better than before. Ulysses, looking to buy some new trousers in Florence, is offered a pair that were never picked up by the customer, and fit perfectly. It’s the start of a new look for him. Socks? In Italy? Nah mate.

But what of London? What of it? Col brings Pete in his ex-wartime ambulance—never again, Temps, says Pete, who later hitch-hikes home—and even Col finds it hard to find fault with anything however hard he tries. Which is clearly the reader’s cue to chuckle indulgently. Meanwhile, Pete instantly fits in—the apartment has a piano, naturally—because he travelled to Italy in a different life before the war. You’re a mystery, Pete. But then, in this novel in which Winman might tell us how a character is feeling without ever offering the reader any real insights, everybody is a mystery. Their job is to get on with living the life she’s mapped out for them.

The chapter ends with Ulysses in contemplative mood, smoking next to the statue of Dante—which gives us less of his interior life than a musing, poetic-sounding meditation as he looks at the moon nd skey. He becomes aware of ‘the universe, that endless canopy of chance and wonder….’ Not great at capturing a character’s turn of phrase, Winman, when they get poetical. Whatever, he thinks back to the first time he saw the statue. ‘I was supposed to give you someone’s best a long time ago, so I’m doing it now. Evelyn is her name. Evelyn Skinner.’

Ah, cute. Because the next chapter is all about her, and guess who’s thinking about coming to Florence for the first time in ten years? Winman has left the little gang in Florence, quietly getting on with their lives, and we only ever catch glimpses of them from now, in 1954, until the end of the chapter in 1959. Which is more than Evelyn does, because as she starts to make the trip regularly again, Winman keeps playing tricks to prevent them from meeting. She does meet Alys on her first trip, now a likeable and precocious art-lover with a key to Evelyn’s favourite church. They get on wonderfully, and Alys shows her the portrait sketch Evelyn’s famous artist friend has done for her—and signed! When Alys tells Ulysses, it’s already too late for him to catch up with Evelyn’s train as it leaves for Rome, with no forwarding address.

Damn. ‘Had she listened to that quiet nudge inside her, that impulse to go south, she would have crossed into Piazza Santo Spirito at the same time as Ulysses, who was on his way to his workshop. They would have stopped and looked at one another in disbelief and she would have said, It’s you, isn’t it? and he would’ve said, Yes, it’s me.’ Winman loves this idea, and uses it again, several times, throughout the chapter. They still haven’t met by the end of it, in 1959. Don’t ask me why.

But to rewind to north London in 1954, at the start of Evelyn’s chapter. She’s living a pared-down, postwar version of her own best life, based near enough to Hampstead to swim in the women-only pool, teaching at the Slade at the age of 73 although ‘she looked ten years younger.’ She must have legions of interesting friends and past gay lovers, but the sociable lifestyle we’re supposed to believe in is only vaguely suggested. Winman only ever shows her with students or her best friend, Dotty Cunningham. She’s the famous artist—‘Isn’t that Dorothea Cunningham?—and she’s at some kind of crossroads in her life. She’s uninspired artistically, has just reached the end of her latest passionate gay affair—it was Evelyn who had been her mentor both as and artist and gay woman—and… that’s it really. Interior lives? Not that you’d notice, but they’re both a bit glum. And Dotty’s drinking too much. It’s Evelyn (I think) who suggests a trip to Rome via Florence, their first since the war.

Cue exciting journey by train, Dotty eyeing up the tottie and Evelyn still her knowingly indulgent teacher. She still remembers the last time she was in Florence, wondering whatever happened to those two lovely young men. They must have both survived, surely? (I realise I didn’t mention Darnley was killed after their meeting, when he and Ulysses had been posted further up the line.) We’re wondering how Winman will engineer a happy meeting with Ulysses, but for Evelyn now it’s memory time. ‘Firenze, mio amore!’ she gushes as they arrive—pass me the sick bucket—and Dottie starts to rally. They’ll only be there for a few days, because this is just a short stopover on the way to Evelyn’s aunt’s place near Rome…. Some people don’t need a lucky break to catapult them to Italy, and I realise that what Winman the kindly author has done for the East Enders is grant them honorary middle-class privileges. Lucky them.

Whatever, Dotty is going to try to get her mojo back with some sketches in charcoal while Evelyn takes in the glories of… etc. Which accounts for the meeting with Alys on their final afternoon before their evening train. What are the chances? Winman shifts into prankster mode, engineering near-misses for the next five years or more. But, if the title of the next chapter is anything to go by—La Dolce Vita, 1960—nobody’s suffering. And it was around now that I realised I don’t really care about these people. To me, they’re little more than nicely-crafted chess pieces moving around the most beautiful board imaginable—Winman is clearly happiest when describing the lost world of Florence before the era of mass tourism, and she can move them around however she likes.

1960 and 1966-8
More of the same? Yes. But first, Winman forces poor Massimo to give a context-setting lecture. ‘Let me explain, he said. The country’s in the grip of an economic miracle due in no small part to the Marshall Plan – or the European Recovery Program, to give it its proper name – and there’s a great sense of relief and optimism after the war and Fascism. … Reconstruction is at an all-time high and mass migration has shifted a demographic from the deprived rural south to the more urban affluent north.’ That’s enough of that. Ulysses is making a real go of his globes, Cressy is still living off the winnings from his Olympics bet—what on earth were the odds?—and the pensione brings in the tourists. La Dolce Vita? It’ll do, as they live a life we poor readers can only dream of.

As a nod to some distant relative of plausibility, in these years Winman does make her main characters suffer one truly unfortunate experience each, but in two of the cases they end up realising that the silver lining outshines the cloud anyway. The other is the sudden death of the woman from the stone benches who has become Cressy’s soul-mate—but nobody can really complain about there being too much death in this novel. It takes Cressy a long time to get over it, but an unexpected visit from Peg of all people—she had always shown him a lot of intergenerational affection in London, and he’s always stayed in touch—helps him to rally round. Bless.

This is late in these chapters, and Peg’s marriage to the respectable but dull Ted has finally run aground. He’s small-minded and undermining, and Winman has never made any real effort to make the marriage convincing. The Peg we know from the pub would never have stood for his nonsense, especially when a Christmas spent at the pensione before their wedding reveals all his pettiness and everybody else’s generosity. And reminded her of Pete’s genius at bringing out her singing talent. Ted doesn’t like her to sing, of course, and during the visit she bonds with everybody except him. He doesn’t get why everybody makes such a fuss of Italy. Over the years, in some anonymous suburb in Kent, she slowly regains some independence, often without Ted’s realising it. Does he know about the singing she takes up again at the pub? At best, he tolerates it, as he tolerates the expensive phone calls to Italy.

But I was writing about losses. In fact, it’s Alys’s loss that happens first. She’d known from the age of about fourteen that she prefers girls to boys, and a couple of years later she’s having her first full-on affair. It’s with Romy, the daughter of a visiting American academic, and Winman pulls out all the first-love stops. This is still in the early 1960s, and her life becomes as sweet as Winman can make it in what becomes a summer of love and full-on gay sex. (Winman is quite good at lesbian sex. Straight sex not so much, partly because it’s always illicit and hurried. Up against the railway-arch wall for Peg and Eddie, which is how Alys happened. Or, usually, some wall or hidden corner indoors with Ulysses in the pensione. Winman seems daunted by the idea of describing straight sex, so she doesn’t, and she likes to pretend it’s been free and easy since the 1940s. If Winman grew up in a working-class neighbourhood, she will know how far from the truth that was.) It culminates in a Vespa trip to a local castle Romy has access to—Winman will use any excuse to let us into these lovely places—and it’s marvellous. Except Romy notices a boy at the café, and Alys notices her noticing. Later, Romy asks her doesn’t she think the boy is good-looking. She could marry a boy like that.

Argh. Romy has no idea that Alys thinks what they have together is the start of a lifelong commitment. Alys, devastated by the truth, packs and leaves as soon as Romy is asleep. How hard can it be to walk the few kilometres to Florence? In fact, she gets lost among the dark, winding roads around the castle… and meanwhile, Romy’s mother has phoned the pensione to ask for her daughter. She’s staying there, isn’t she? Umm, isn’t Alys staying with Romy…? The mother panics, and Ulysses goes off to search. So it’s Cressy who answers when Alys calls from a public phone, and speeds to her rescue. His trusty Moto-Guzzi and sidecar are perfect for the job—and a traffic cop who pulls him over is charmed by the story he tells of first love and broken dreams. Together, they find her, and there isn’t a dry eye in the house. Including the cop’s. Shortly after this, Peg is on one of her occasional visits—or is she speaking on the phone?—and gives the first bit of motherly advice ever to pass her lips. Alys will get over it—Peg is slightly less blunt than that—and guess what? She does. Get over it….

…because she has a life to live. She’s making a cosy reputation as a guitarist and singer, collaborating with Pete on his occasional visits. But she’s her adopted father’s daughter, and art is what she wants to pursue. Which she does, in London, where she happens upona one-off lecture given by guess who, now 82 and still ‘looking ten years younger.’ But Winman isn’t ready to bring them together yet, and leaves Alys to get on with discovering that she might have a terrific talent for drawing, but that’s really all. The years in London aren’t wasted, obviously—Winman needs her to get away from the cosiness of the pensione to find herself, that’s all—but home is where the heart is, and home is Florence now. Of course it is.

Ulysses’ loss is very different. If you say 1966 in England, people remember the World Cup win. In his second ‘vision of the future’ some months before this—the first was in 1948—Cressy sees Geoff Hurst, who doesn’t even have a place in the England squad, scoring a hat-trick to help England to a victory in the final. He gets one of the Londoners, over on a visit, to take the famous suitcase back, with its hidden compartment full of cash. He knows of a different bookie now, and the rest is history. The odds? Who knows? Winman isn’t telling, again, but the winnings that are smuggled back are enough for him to share with Alys, Ulysses and Pete.

But for Italians 1966 brought—classic Winman meteorological alert—the worst flood in Florence for centuries. The streets were inundated with sewage and foul mud to a depth of metres in places, and we can already guess where a chapter headed Mud Angels 1966-8 is going to take us. What we get is the most memorable set piece of the whole novel, over 20-odd pages, of Ulysses’ terrible night of trying to salvage what he can, and the devastating impact on Florence. He’s alone in the pensione as days of torrential rain continue into another night, and he suspects there might be flooding in the cellar. Cue his singlehandedly carrying upstairs as much as he can of what is stored down there, while the water rises higher. Cue, as he leaves to check on his workshop, the sight he has of the river about to burst over into the city, then the first inundation…

…and so on. It’s good writing. And by the time he gets to the workshop it’s already too late. His best ever globe, almost a metre in diameter, is all he manages to save, and a press photographer catches him as he holds it above his head. But it gets washed away in a freak wave before he can get it to the pensione. All his other completed globes and etching plates are gone… and I’m sure he’ll later decide it’s the best thing that could have happened to him—I can imagine him going through a complete change of artistic direction. He’s already beginning to use his own ideas, and now he will have to rely entirely on his own creativity instead of his father’s library of templates. And, even better than that—guess whose photograph has reached even the London Observer, holding aloft a huge globe above the caption, ‘Atlas Rising from the Flood?’ And guess who sees it, and packs herself off to help with the rescue? She stays at her usual pensione until she tracks Ulysses down and, after 22 years, you can imagine the scene when she does.

And you can imagine the scenes of the international rescue of Florence and its treasures from the slime. Winman turns it into one long confirmation of how much everybody loves the city—but this is a human-interest novel, and it’s all about the people. Ordinary Florentines, students from all over the world—including Jem, once a gawky art student of Evelyn’s with poor teeth but now a medical student who’s had some proper dental treatment at last. Alys, not knowing him at all, shows him the ropes on his first day, and when he sees Evelyn, at the pensione that has now become a free hostel for volunteers, the Florence family just gets bigger. Heartwarming? I’m sure Winman would want us to think so.

1966-8 ends with the months following the flood, and the reunion on its anniversary. Nothing to look at here, I think, except confirmation of something Winman had already made obvious. ‘Made for each other,’ says one of them about Massimo and Jem after comments they both make about the music in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. This novel might mainly be a love letter to Florence, but Winman likes to include all things Italian, from motorbikes to movies. And a lot of gay awakenings.

1968-79 and All About Evelyn…
…the latter being a combined epilogue and prologue covering Evelyn’s first-ever visit to Florence. She’s about to celebrate her 21st birthday, and guess what she says when she arrives? Is that sick bucket full yet?

But before that, does 1968-79 bring yet more of the same? La dolce vita certainly carries on, although Winman has a few loose ends to tie up. Not that we ever know why she forced an eleven-year delay on the first reunion between Evelyn and Ulysses. (I can only speculate that she wanted Alys to be in her 20s before meeting Evelyn, who can become the kind of mentor she had been for Dotty.) But, it turns out, eleven years is nothing. I haven’t spent much time since the early chapters on Peg’s undying love for Eddie, the American she was convinced would return. Winman likes to remind us this is the only real love Peg has ever known, and that Ulysses doesn’t deserve second-best. He understands, because Winman tells us in 1944, and she wouldn’t try to pretend. But that’s OK for Ted, of course, who doesn’t even know what love is, even if everybody knew the marriage would never last.

But this isn’t the end of this story of true love and devotion… because sometime in the late 1970s, more than 30 years after the war, Peg sees somebody looking at her as she sings professionally in a bar with Pete. He seems to recognise her, but he disappears after the performance. Who could it be? Not Eddie, she knows… but, it turns out, another American who was with Eddie when he first met her. In fact, he had spotted her first in 1944, but (etc.), and the rest, again, is history. Regrettably, so is Eddie, dead shortly after. Would he have come for her? 100 per cent. He was going to make his life with her, says this eligible 50-something and, finally, Peg can put a memory to rest. Later, the possibility of life with Eddie’s friend seems very possible—he’d fancied her from the start—but Peg isn’t rushing. Bless, again.

That’s one tale of true love. The other belongs to Ulysses, who has spent 30 years not meeting the right person. Could it be that his true soulmate—never Peg, as he’s always known—had been killed in the war? Winman isn’t saying, but Captain Darnley had always held some promise the 20-year-old Ulysses didn’t really recognise for what it was. It’s Evelyn who gets to the bottom of it. Winman manoeuvres things in such a way that Evelyn comes to realise where Ulysses goes every year on some kind of personal pilgrimage. Gay 90-somethings know about these things—the pilgrimage is to Darnley’s war grave. What else would it be? ‘Eddying time, Evelyn. Churches, frescoes. Sicily. That first handshake in the desert. All those moments, those years were his now. To remember or to forget. So I choose to remember. The best man ever. And everything about him is vivid. And he is young. And he is laughing.’ It doesn’t sound like an East End boy, but that isn’t going to stop Winman framing her bittersweet little twist just how she likes it. What was I saying about gay awakenings? It’s just that in this case, it only wakes up once a year.

Is every other loose end tied up? Yes. Do you need the details? Cressy is really, really old, and he can’t plausibly live forever. So he gets a picturesque death in his favourite grove of trees—he’s had a thing about trees since the flowering cherry he used to talk to in London—then, when Claude takes Ulysses to the body he, Claude, realises something. ‘Claude’s voice was faint. Out, out, brief candle, he whispered. / You wanna go with Cress? / Claude blinked. Life’s but a walking shadow, Ulysses.’ Is it the most sentimental death of a pet since the yapping Jip over Dora’s lifeless body in David Copperfield? I can’t think of a more blatant one. And the spreading of Cressy’s ashes is all you would hope for. Or dread.

Next. Alys has found her mojo, both as a 1970s singer-songwriter and as an artist. She’s seen what Ulysses is doing with his globes now, has her own ideas, and runs with them in ever bolder directions. It’s what we always hoped for the business, with family knobs on. She also finds something else, in the form of an American she hasn’t seen since she was sixteen. Going straight had never worked for Romy—but this time, Alys is going to take it slow…. Dotty? Living a dream in England, with her latest. As Evelyn had left England forever, telling her she must visit her in the pensione, ‘Bring Hannah,’ she says. ‘Helena,’ says Dotty. How we laughed. Evelyn, at the age of 87 but looking etc., now lives the Italian dream at least until she’s 99, when she says she’s going to die. But we’ll have to take her word for that, because on her birthday near the end of the novel she seems perky enough to last a lot longer.

Even Col gets his moment in the sun. He’s a changed man, having finally realised that the serial failures of relationships he’s been in since Agnes left have been one long wrong step. And Winman seems to want to make the point that Col-like cynicism never works for anybody, so she spends any time with him nudging him away from it. Through a kind of hinted-at osmosis he’s gradually absorbed some of Ulysses and Cressy’s sensitivity, and his pointless determination to save the pub from demolition morphs into a determination to save Cressy’s cherry tree. But it’s Mrs Kaur, the Sikh woman who looks after poor Ginny whenever he’s away, who brings about the real transformation, right down to an altruistic outlook on life and vegetarianism. As one of the characters says about some outrageous implausibility or other, ‘you couldn’t write it.’ But Sarah Winman could.

The end? Nah. Winman isn’t sure that nearly 400 pages are enough to convince us that Florence before mass tourism was a heaven on earth. So she gives us Evelyn’s 28 days of bliss. First love, long life lessons on art and poetry from Constance Everly, later to become Cressy’s go-to (fictional) poet, and friendly conversations with EM Forster when he can get away from his overbearing mother. In this novel which is really one long tribute to A Room with a View, Winman reverse-engineers a fictional account in which Forster’s awakening to what Florence really offers is partly through Evelyn’s influence. You couldn’t write it.