A wonderful book that depicts the lives within a country house on the cusp of a new age.Cars are beginning to make an appearance and WW1 is looming with the young son who has ambitions of being a pilot.It starts on a snowy Christmas Eve 1913.One of the maids Emily is in trouble which has devastat...
Just lately he could never get to sleep here. In Oxford, it wasn’t so bad: he was inconspicuous among the rows of little rooms. He rarely went to lectures; his tutor told him that he was a Beckforth as if he would never amount to anything, which made him laugh once out of the man’s sight. It was ...
It was one of those days in June when the light seems reluctant to leave. Even though the streets looked dim—the lights were just coming on—the sky was a light, improbable turquoise, and as Jo leaned her head against the glass of the hospital window and looked out, she saw people going down the s...
The letter I sent you has been returned to me. There is my handwriting, across the envelope. I wrote it down exactly as you told it to me, so it cannot be wrong. It cannot be. Yet it has come back unopened again. This is the second time that it has come back inside another envelope, a larger one ...
He was always alone; he did not mix with the staff beneath him, nor the family above him. Others might have considered this fact both a blessing and a burden; but he was not a man to dwell on his personal requirements. In fact, after so many years of serving the Cavendish family as their butler, ...
Octavia was not asleep, but she lay with her head propped against the soft deep pillows, cradling John’s body in her arms. He began to stir, and finally opened his eyes. For just a moment she saw an unusual expression—a mixture of resignation and grief—in his face. And then he smiled. ...
The accused was brought the few yards from the gaol into one of the two imposing courtrooms that still stand today: octagonal rooms that had been completed just thirteen years before, in 1758.1 One of Donellan’s friends from London, William Walsh, accompanied him into the court and proceeded to a...