Arnold Drive

By Hugh Cornwell

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The story of a man’s journey from innocence to experience where he discovers his moral compass isn’t always pointing the right way…

Publication date: September 2014
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About the book

'You do have an intriguing life, Arnold dear. Things just seem to happen to you…'

Nothing much has ever happened to Rev Arnold Drive, the meekly quiet vicar of St Tobias', who cannot even cross his own living room for fear of the shadows of his latticework windows. Feeling safe only within the walls of his church and the gentle rules of his faith, Arnold is ironically a man utterly without drive; a man content that nothing much ever happens.

Nothing, that is, until the day his church is sold off to property developers. Ejected from his church and his home, Arnold is thrust out into the modern world - a world for which he is utterly ill-equipped.

Suddenly, life presents Arnold with a series of moral dilemmas that test his faith, his judgement and his understanding of human nature. His first experience of love and sex, a surprise confession of murder, a suicide, the prospect of unexpected wealth, the discovery of a hidden family history, all cause Arnold to reassess the certainties he has taken for granted. Then, a near-fatal car accident forces him to face up to the fragility of sanity and of life itself...

Arnold Drive is the story of a man's journey from innocence to experience where he discovers his moral compass isn't always pointing the right way. Arnold learns that passive acceptance of fate, or of God's will, doesn't help much, that decisions must be made and acted on, and that other people are not always what they seem.

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