"Mr Nicholas" is a devastating study of the domestic horrors of English suburbia, personified by the Nicholas family and its snobbish patriarch, a petty tyrant whose greatest pleasure is to sip gin while bullying and arguing with his beleaguered wife and three sons, 'intellectual, ineffectual' Peter, rebellious Owen, and young David, whose relationship with a retired Army captain threatens to bring scandal on the family. With wry humour and surgically precise prose, Thomas Hinde paints an unforgettable portrait of an everyday monster, a character who is contemptible, yet curiously...