In 1989 England, Phillip Prys, a pompous, middle-aged playwright has a stroke. He's unfit and fond of drinking and smoking. His new second wife, Shirin, is Iranian and glad to be out of the turbulence of her own country. She is MEETING THE ENGLISH as Phillip's first family come to terms with his affliction.

The divorced wife, Myfanwy, and a school-aged boy and girl, are less than concerned. Phillip's serious stroke will require months of recovery. Word about Phillip filters through to colleges where his works are taught. With Phillip home from hospital, young Juliet has a row with her mother Myfanwy (who hoped to get the house if Phillip died) and opts to hang around in her dad's house with Shirin.

Struan, a Scots lad with a strong accent, arrives to be a live-in caregiver. Struan finds the household arrangements confusing at first, but Juliet is glad to have an outsider present to ease the tensions. Laddish Jake lives elsewhere and drops in when he needs food. Myfanwy, who renovates homes to sell, has nothing on her mind but property prices, a common preoccupation in London as the economy was dragging expensive homes into negative equity at this period. She is certain that Phillip won't ever walk or talk again. After all, it's been months.

By turns a sharp commentary and a dark comedy, the account of a dismantled London family and a selfless Scots lad from a town of closing coal mines will suit adults or mature young adults. Juliet develops into a far more interesting person as she starts to grow up, out of her mother's influence. And Phillip has occasional semi-lucid flashes, thinking that he is watching a film being made with these young people as the stars. In a way he is right. They are the stars of their own stories. The 1989 setting, we are reminded, is the year that the walls fell and the world lost some of its tyrants. MEETING THE ENGLISH is acerbic and warm hearted by turns, facing a reality with lingering illness that most writers flinch from describing but Kate Clanchy describes in matter of fact terms.