The fall of the sparrow

This is the life story of Jason Pellew, or at least the story of that part of his life bounded by childhood at one end and early middle age at the other. The narrator is Henry Payne, who first encounters Jason when they are both young children and then meets him repeatedly thereafter: they both attend the same public school and are up at Cambridge at the same time, they both help to break up Blackshirts rallies in the East End in the 1930s and their paths cross repeatedly during World War Two. Jason goes off the rails after the War, ending up in court accused of having committed a range of minor felonies, mainly in an attempt to raise funds following a disastrously short-lived marriage to an exploitative older woman who takes him for a ride.