Mr Mac And Me

By Esther Freud

Thomas Maggs is an awkward 13-year-old with a club foot whose parents run the Blue Anchor pub in a sleepy Suffolk village.

His life is abruptly turned upside down by two events; the arrival of a mysterious artist, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and the outbreak of the First World War. ’Mac’ and his flame-haired wife Margaret soon become a source of fascination for young Thomas, and Freud tenderly explores this unlikely friendship and the parallels between the boy and the artist.