When ‘Lord Jim at Home’ was first published in 1973, it was described as ‘squalid and startling’, ‘nastily horrific’, and a ‘monstrous parody’ of upper-middle class English life. It is the story of Giles Trenchard, who grows up isolated in an atmosphere of privilege and hidden violence; who goes to war, and returns; and then, one day – like the hero of Joseph Conrad’s classic ‘Lord Jim’ – commits an act that calls his past, his character and his whole world into question.