Antonia Honeywell welcomes you to London, but not as you know it. Oxford Street burned for three weeks, Regent’s Park has been bombed, nothing grows from the over-farmed and poisoned earth and only the very desperate or very clever can survive.

In THE SHIP, father of 16-year-old Lalla is set to captain an escape ship with 500 people on board. Throughout the voyage Lalla’s unease grows and her father’s true intentions become suspicious.

Antonia, from Little Chalfont, studied English at Manchester University and worked at the Natural History Museum and the V&A Museum running creative writing workshops and education programmes for children, before training as a teacher.

She says: “Our planet contains a finite amount of oil and our lifestyles rely upon it to a degree that we know is unsustainable.

"Industrial scale food production destroys rainforests and soil structure; we’ve lost all connection between the agriculture and the seasons.

“We know these things, just as we know our lives are monitored constantly.

"Yet, like frogs being boiled we drive, buy winter strawberries and trust that there will always be more…”

During her ten years teaching English, Drama and Film Studies, she wrote a musical, and a play which was performed at the Edinburgh Festival but this is her first novel.

THE SHIP is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson.