Troubles: J. Farrell

`And so at the Majestic everything returned to the way it had been before. The gleaming tiles became dulled. Sofas as sleek as prize cattle lost their glow.`

1919, the Majestic Hotel in Kinalough, Ireland. Haunted war veteran Major Brendan Archer arrives to marry Angela Spencer, daughter of the house. But his fiancee is strangely altered, and her family`s fortunes have suffered a spectacular decline.

The hotel`s hundreds of rooms are disintegrating; its few remaining guests thrive on rumours and games of whist; herds of cats have taken over the Imperial Bar; bamboo shoots threaten the foundations; and piglets frolic in the squash court. And outside the order of the British Empire totters, as the violence of `the troubles` mounts.