In all failed relationships there is a point that passes unnoticed at the time, which can later be identified as the beginning of the decline. For Helen it was the weekend that the Hidden Man came to …
Subtly brilliant comedy of social rivalry between the wars. Emmeline Lucas (known universally to her friends as Lucia) is an arch-snob of the highest order. In Miss Elizabeth Mapp of Mallards Lucia me…
'A very good novel indeed about the fragility and also the tenacity of love' commented the Spectator recently about this 1953 novel by Dorothy Whipple, which was ignored fifty years ago because 'edito…
Monica Dickens's first book, published in 1940, could easily have been called Mariana - an Englishwoman. For that is what it is: the story of a young English girl's growth towards maturity in the 1930…
The stage is set. Marooned overnight by a snowstorm in a grand country house are a cast of characters and a setting that even Agatha Christie might recognize – a vicar, an Army major, a Dowager, a sle…
Mr Peacocke, a Classical scholar, has come to Broughtonshire with his beautiful American wife to live as a schoolmaster. But when the blackmailing brother of her American first husband appears at the …
Three sisters marry very different men and the choices they make determine whether they will flourish, be tamed or be repressed. Lucy's husband is her beloved companion; Vera's husband bores her and s…
Ignored.Seventy-something Janet Pimm is invisible. Spending most of her days alone, she tends her beloved allotment with the care and love she doesn't receive from people. Plants, Janet thinks, are mo…
Edward is living in a world he can't afford and to which he doesn't belong. To camouflage himself, he has catered to his friends' fetching drycleaning, sorting flowers for premieres. It's a noble effo…
