Until the Colours Fade — Tim Jeal

First published in 1976, Until the Colours Fade was Tim Jeal's fourth novel, set in 1852 in a Lancashire mill town transformed by the Industrial Revolution. Disenfranchised cotton workers are restless, while landed gentry make uneasy common cause with newly wealthy manufacturers. When painter Tom Strickland encounters the combustible Magnus Crawford, lately returned from military service abroad, he is drawn into a web of local hatreds and intrigues that will lead to an epic conclusion at the siege of Sebastopol.
'First-rate - I was hooked from the first page... Jeal has a close sympathy for the passions and politics of Victorian Britain.' Times
'A long, meaty, intelligent, historical novel, full of qualities like surprise, expectation and its fulfilment, dramatic description and real understanding of the physical enormities of old-style campaigns like the Crimea.' Financial Times
'Jeal handles his ambitious range of settings with considerable craftsmanship.'TLS