I’d wager that if you offered men the opportunity when they died, of being reunited with their deceased father, many would find the prospect unattractive. A surprising number of men fear their father and spend most of their life coming to grips with the complex. Hardie, the protagonist of this story was a bad father. He meant no evil nor was he evil by his own lights, yet he did systematically, emotionally at least, destroy every member of his family.

But this is not a family case study, rather a sort of faded black and white photo of a group of people you might see in a small country town historic museum. There they are in strange shabby clothes, in unlikely poses, stark, sombre, unsmiling yet so eloquent and. challenging us to establish contact.