The Hired Man is a novel by Melvyn Bragg, first published in 1969 by Secker and Warburg. It is the first part of Bragg's Cumbrian Trilogy. The story is set predominantly in the rural area around Thurston (Bragg's name for Wigton, his home town), from the 1890s to the 1920s, and follows the life of John Tallentire, a farm labourer and coal miner. John is the father of Joseph Tallentire, the central character of Bragg's A Place in England, whose son, Douglas Tallentire, is the central character of Kingdom Come. Source: Wikipedia (en)