In February 1952, aged six, Mary stands shivering in a Suffolk field and realises she is meant to be a boy. Spanning three decades, from the oppressive English countryside of the 1950s, to London in the Swinging Sixties, to 1970’s America, Sacred Country follows Mary in her quest to find a place of safety and fulfilment in a savage and confusing world. Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1992.

Alongside Mary’s journey to become Martin, many of the novel’s rich collection of characters, are also searching for something. Walter Loomis works in the family butcher’s shop in Suffolk but later has dreams of a new life in Nashville as a country singer. In the extract below set in 1957, he meets his first, unrequited, love at the cinema. Later in the novel, while on a sightseeing tour in London, Walter wonders about staying on the bus and doing the tour all over again, ‘like he used to sit in Leiston cinema and see the feature film twice.’

By 1971 Mary/Martin, living in London, is visited by Irene who is up for the day from Suffolk. ‘In the afternoon, they went to Victoria Station and watched cartoons. They seemed to have run out of things to say. It was easier to sit in the dark and look at pigs dancing and mice scheming with human cunning.

When they came out to get the number 11 bus to Liverpool Street, Irene said: I’ve always liked it when they write “That’s All Folks” in a circle. It’s more friendly than “The End”, isn’t it?’