'Some men will poke anything. Tell you, boy, whoring, back-handers, Y'know trumps, and a cushy place on the coal, they go together in Pencaer'.

Berry's style is compresses to the point of obliquity, but serves the admirable purpose of shedding a sudden and vivid life on his creations. We have this for example, as a first description of one of his heroines: 'Elsie wiggled her ballooning figure, round breasts, belly and buttocks, but her hands and feet were tiny, immaculate, the symmetry of fairyland'.

Berry is a stylist, a literary man. For all the harshness of his settings, his concerns and his narrative, he uses this concision and this brilliance of texture to stab home one insight after another. A death from smallpox is described thus: ...carted away in a black van, spectators ranged out wide, his toothless widow screaming lament like a Breughel arrest'.

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