'There is always in our minds the hope that we may find again those golden unhastening days and wake up and dream'
In this beautifully nostalgic memoir, eminent author Angela Thirkell recalls in rich detail the three houses in which she grew up. Focusing first on 'The Grange', where her grandfather, the celebrated painted Sir Edward Burne-Jones, set the cultivated tone, Thirkell also reminisces about her parents' home in Kensington Square and the Burne-Jones' seaside retreat, where Angela's cousin, Rudyard Kipling, lived across the green.
A tale of forbidden explorations, Punch and Judy shows, and adventures in the garden, Three Houses is beautifully evocative of the innocent quality of childhood. From the busy literary centre of London to the English coast, this stunning memoir is both reminiscent of the golden days of youth and an interesting vision of a writer and the early influences that informed her later work.
In August Folly, the village of Worsted is staging Hippolytus. Inevitably, the most absurd romances bloom. Boorish young Richard Tebbins, just down from Oxford, falls in love with Mrs. Dean, mother of nine, whose oldest son loves Richard's sister, who in turn loves another. And round and round it goes. Amidst a series of comic catastrophes, everyone manages to redeem themselves.
Witty, snobbish, sweet, and evocative, Mrs. Thirkell's Barsetshire novels provide a bemused scrutiny of British manners in the most delightfully entertaining doses.
"It is the essence of her humor that her people mean well even when they are exposed at their most insufferable."-Times Literary Supplement
For those who have read and reread Austen, Trollope, and Dickens, discovering a novel by Angela Thirkell is akin to finding gold in an abandoned mine. Long out of print, her novels are currently enjoying a minor renaissance.
As the title of this bright, unashamedly nostalgic novel suggests, Thirkell had a genius for describing the comfortable routine of everyday life in a small English village. Published in 1939, Before Lunch is a glittering portrait of the charming community of "Barsetshire," based on her own county.
Lady Bond and Lord Pomfret are compelled to unite with the Middletons and the Stoners to stop the erection of a tea shop and garage on unspoiled Pooker's Piece. The young and the not-so-young all fall in love, not always with the right person, and sort out their affairs in a hilarious welter of cross-purposes.
The irresistible Brandons, their friends and servants, are full of youthful nonsense and middle-aged folly. People will fall in love with the wrong person, and all are determined to misunderstand each other. Like Barbara Pym, E.F. Benson, and Jane Austen herself, Angela Thirkell has created a small world of her own in the English countryside. Calf-love, village affairs, and literary effort are her nominal subjects; but her real interest is people, at their imperfect best. This is the gentlest of social satire.
In the coronation summer of 1838, seventeen-year-old Fanny Harcourt goes to London to stay with her close friend Emily Dacre for the festivities. The young Victoria, scarcely older than Fanny herself, is to assume the throne of England. Enjoying the pomp and pageantry and the swelling crowds of commoners and snobs, Fanny soon catches the eye of a handsome novelist. Infatuations, matchmaking hazards, and romantic misunderstandings enhance the carnival atmosphere as the two girls explore the city-but it will take a real disaster to sort out the merely spectacular from the truly honorable.
