Martin Amis

Lionel Pepperdine is England's pre-eminent yob. A churlish and unashamedly savage reprobate, he was served his 1st Anti-Social Behaviour Order aged 3, for the application of explosives to excrement. It was the start of an inimitable career.

Summer 1970. A long, hot summer. In a castle in Italy, half a dozen young lives are afloat on the sea of change, trapped inside the history of the sexual revolution.