English Music (novel)

English Music is the sixth novel by Peter Ackroyd. Published in 1992, it is both a bildungsroman and, in the words of critic John Barrell, "partly a series of rhapsodies and meditations on the nature of English culture, written in the styles of various great authors." As with all Ackroyd's previous novels, it focuses on London, although on this occasion partly as a backdrop for English culture in general.

The plot is split between a continuous narrative and a series of self-contained stories, all related to the main tale.

The novel opens in the early 1920s, and is for the most part told in the first person of Timothy Harcombe, aged nine at the beginning of the narrative. Timothy lives with (and is home-educated by) his widowed father Clement, a faith healer whose performances at the Chemical Theatre, Hackney, involve Timothy as his assistant. Clement Harcombe instills a vivid sense of English culture in Timothy, principally through selected readings of classic works like Robinson Crusoe and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Timothy's life is suddenly turned upside-down by the arrival of his maternal grandfather, who takes Timothy away to live with him and his grandmother in Wiltshire. After an abortive attempt by several of Harcombe's acquaintances to reunite Timothy with his father, Timothy is returned to Wiltshire where he attends the local school and befriends a disabled boy, Edward Campion. It becomes evident that Timothy possesses skills akin to those performed onstage by his father, as he cures his grandmother of a debilitating nervous shake.

Time passes and Timothy does not hear from his father again during most of his schooldays. On leaving school he returns to London where he finds his father, recently separated from his girlfriend, Gloria Patterson. He is virtually destitute and making ends meet by carrying house-calls as a healer, with largely unsuccessful results. Finding his father's finances in chaos he decides to accompany him on his healing visits, and Harcombe's skill miraculously reappears. Timothy becomes briefly infatuated with Gloria, whom he encounters by chance, and whose callous, scheming attitude both repels and arouses him. He also discovers that his father had been pressurised into sending him to Wiltshire by the educational authorities, whose concerns about Timothy's unorthodox schooling were exacerbated when they discovered that his father had been using him as part of a theatrical performance.

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