Angus Wilson

Gerald Middleton, a distinguished, retired historian is coming to terms with his life's folly. As a student, Middleton witnessed the unearthing of the Melpham idol, a pagan fertility figure that electrified modern medieval scholarship by turning up in the grave of a 7th-century bishop. He also began an affair with Dollie, the fiancée of his best friend, the man who had privately confessed to planting the idol as a hoax. (amazon.com)

Angus Wilson wrote his novel "Late Call" in 1964, and Anthony Burgess ranked it as one of the 99 best novels written since 1939. Adapting Wilson's novel into four episodes, Dennis Potter expanded Wilson's prologue ("The Hot Summer of 1911") into the drama's centerpiece, intercutting between past and present as he probed spiritual desolation in the English Midlands.