Charles Pemberton has lived his whole life in the same small town: he went to the best local school, he lived in one of the finest houses and his parents were, effectively, middle-class aristocracy. His quiet life of privileged contentment might well have continued undisturbed, were it not for the arrival of Clark ‘Large’ Rossiter . . .

In this uncharismatic town, Large is the biggest personality, equally capable of magnetic charm and all-consuming wrath; he terrorizes the old guard and shakes up the established hierarchy in his relentless pursuit of money, status and, eventually, revenge.

Filled with Binding’s typical perspicacity, but leavened with a refreshing wit, this is England: greedy, flabby and vulnerable. Through the lives of Charles and Large, Binding chronicles the vertiginous period from Thatcher to Blair – years all the more prescient for their similarity to the current boom and bust.

The Champion is literary satire at its savage best.