Three women spend a week together in the country. They have done this for many years, but this year something has changed.Liz has married and she has a baby son, but she is uncertain in the role of wife and mother. Camilla is a school secretary, and she is acutely aware that her frien’d life has ...
When newly orphaned Cassandra Dashwood arrives as governess to little Sophy, the scene seems set for the archetypal romance between young girl and austere widowed employer. Strange secrets abound in the ramshackle house. But conventions are subverted in this atmospheric novel: one of its worlds i...
Cressy has grown up in a world of women, presided over by her artistic, eccentric grandfather. Rebelling against the wholesome values of home, she leaves, takes a job and meets David - a self-satisfied journalist tied to his mother's apron strings. Their mutual need for escape binds them together.
Harriet and Vesey meet when they are teenagers, and their love is as intense and instantaneous as it is innocent. But they are young. All life still lies ahead. Vesey heads off hopefully to pursue a career as an actor. Harriet marries and has a child, becoming a settled member of suburban society...
As the cancer inside her developed, so did the determination to finish this book. It was the same determination that she used to fight the illness, remain cheerful, and above all, live to the last moment. This book is about guilt as well as blame. It explores the feelings of bereavement: the ange...
There was scaffolding over the front—the South side—and patches of new plaster, a smell of paint and putty and a sound of hammering. The balustrade had been mended and the fallen urn put back. Two peacocks had arrived. Angel had sent an order for them when she was in Greece, and Nora received the...
I was working as an assistant in Harrods when my first book, At the Jerusalem, was published in 1967 – a fact which, for some reason, struck the diarist of The Times as being of interest to the paper’s readers. A year after publication, I met Elizabeth Taylor at a party. She told me how intrigued...
There was scaffolding over the front—the South side—and patches of new plaster, a smell of paint and putty and a sound of hammering. The balustrade had been mended and the fallen urn put back. Two peacocks had arrived. Angel had sent an order for them when she was in Greece, and Nora received the...
Sunlight gilded the stone deer on the piers of the main gates, where the steward stopped his horse and shouted to the lodge-keeper to take in a line of washing. As he rode on up the great avenue he could not see a twig that was out of place; on either side, stretches of water – one harp-shaped, o...
I felt chastened soon after this when I read a piece on Taylor by the estimable writer Philip Hensher, who said (in an undoubtedly Austenian tone) that: ‘Any woman novelist who writes grammatically, it sometimes seems, will sooner or later be compared to Jane Austen, but in Taylor’s case, the com...