Madeleine Bunting

Madeleine Bunting was for many years a columnist for the Guardian, which she joined in 1990. Bunting read History at Cambridge and Politics at Harvard. She is the author of many non-fiction books, including The Plot: A Biography of My Father’s English Acre, which won the Portico Prize, and Love of Country: A Hebridean Journey, which was shortlisted for the Wainwright Golden Beer Book Prize and the Saltire Non-Fiction Book of the Year. She has also written a novel, Island Song. She lives in London.

Coming soon - July 2021

Ceremony of Innocence

Madeleine Bunting

Nadia has been investigating the secretive business of the wealthy Wilcox Smiths in Bahrain. When she goes missing, presumed dead, those close to her unravel a trail that leads back to the 70s in Tehran where Martin Wilcox Smith began his career as a diplomat. Phoebe, Martin’s enigmatic wife, is divided between her love of Nadia and protecting her husband; Fauzia, Martin’s daughter-in-law, is a reporter investigating British ties to the Middle East; and Kate, Martin’s niece, is in a relationship with a Bahraini refugee who opens her eyes to Martin’s corruption; together they are on a path of discovery into their family’s secret past.

A vivid and evocative story that travels between the Shah’s Iran, modern Bahrain and the quintessential English countryside, Ceremony of Innocence explores one family’s entanglement with Empire and the power wielded by the establishment, to uncover colonialism’s legacy of moral compromises and corruption.