"Gardam's superb new novel is surely her masterpiece . . . one of the most moving fictions I have read in years . . . This is the rare novel that drives its readers forward while persistently waylaying and detaining by the sheer beauty and inventiveness of it style." --The Guardian

"The Whitbread winner scores again with a compelling novel based, in part, on the early life of Rudyard Kipling." --Time Out

Sir Edward Feathers has progressed from struggling young barrister to wealthy expatriate lawyer to distinguished retired judge, living out his last days in comfortable seclusion in Dorset. The engrossing and moving account of his life, from birth in colonial Malaya, to Wales, where he is sent as a "Raj orphan," to Oxford, his career and marriage, parallels much of the 20th century's torrid and twisted history.

Old Filth was nominated for the 2005 Orange Prize.

Jane Gardam lives with her husband and three children in England. She has won Katherine Mansfield Award, the PEN Macmillan Silver Pen Award, the Whitbread Novel Award (twice), and has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She was recently awarded the Heywood Hill Literary Prize in recognition of a distinguished literary career.