Charlotte Bingham - Author

Coronet Among the Weeds

The deliciously funny confessions of a debutante which became an international bestseller It is the early 1960s, and eighteen-year-old Charlotte Bingham, fresh from convent school, has been catapulted into the horrors of The Season. Though desperately on the hunt for a Superman to call her own, the country house ball circuit seems to yield nothing but an inexhaustible crop of charmless, chinless Weeds. But Charlotte's adventures are more than sufficiently diverting: whether she's bouffing up her hair to try and pass herself off as a beatnik, hurtling down the Champs Elysees on the back of a Vespa, or accidentally sticking her eyelids together with eyelash glue while at modelling school, her experiments in coming-of-age are never short of intrigue - and disaster. Published in 1963 when she was just nineteen, Bingham's sparkling memoir of her trials and travails became an international bestseller. From its pages emerges a deeply lovable and relentlessly optimistic young woman - for all that her shorthand isn't what it might be - looking for love in all the wrong places.

Spies and Stars MI5, Showbusiness and Me

The wickedly funny sequel to the MI5 and Me, described by Tatler as 'a stone cold comic classic', following the irrepressible Lottie's adventures in 1950s London London in the 1950s. Lottie is a reluctant typist at MI5 and the even more reluctant daughter of the organisation's most illustrious spy. Now she has had the bad luck to fall in love with Harry, a handsome if frustrated young actor, who has also been press-ganged into the family business, acting as one of her father's undercover agents in the Communist hotbed of British theatre. Together the two young lovers embark on a star-studded adventure through the glittering world of theatre - but, between missing files, disapproving parents, and their own burgeoning creative endeavours, life is about to become very complicated indeed...

Friday's Girl

The Blue Note

Daughters of Eden

Wind off the Sea

It is 1947, the worst winter in England since records began, and even the sea is frozen. For the women living in the little fishing port of Bexham, the chronic lack of everything from fuel to food has left them reeling. When Waldo Astley, a handsome young American, drives through thick Sussex snow into the village in his large Buick, he finds Bexham filled not only with grumbling residents, but with frustrated wives and mothers, forced back behind their stoves after celebrating the victory for which they fought so hard on the home front.But Waldo is no ordinary character, and while he has come to Bexham on a personal mission, his effect on all the residents is truly electrifying. For Judy, whose marriage to Walter has been badly affected by long years of separation; for Rusty, whose miscarriage has been mind-shattering; for Mathilda, whose single motherhood has put her eligibility in jeopardy; and for Meggie, still not recovered from her ordeal as a secret agent. For all these women, Waldo Astley is not just a breath of fresh air--but the wind off the sea.

Mums on the run

Mums on the Run tells the often hilarious story of two middle-aged women intent on fleeing hearth and home for a blissful, family-free fortnight of drawing and cooking classes - only to end up at leaky old Hartley House. There the ever-resourceful Aunt Biddy is struggling to get her nephew Tom's life back on track by opening his only asset as an idyllic country retreat.Throw in a Polish butler in Dad's Army uniform, a lovelorn artist, and a succession of oddball guests - and the Mums intent on their run certainly get more than the change they had bargained for!"e;Charlotte Bingham's books make me happy, and none more than Mums on the run. Her sense of humour is infectious."e; WENDY CRAIG"e;A feelgood, put on your dancing shoes kind of book."e; SIMON WILLIAMS"e;Check in at Hartley House for a great read that every stressed-out mum will empathise with."e; LIZA GODDARD

Chestnut Tree

By bestselling British writer Charlotte Bingham, The Chestnut Tree is a sweeping, romantic novel about the women who stayed behind in World War II.It is the summer of 1939, and the residents of the idyllic Sussex fishing port of Bexham are preparing for war. Beautiful but shy Judy Melton, daughter of a naval hero; her determinedly feckless friend, the social butterfly Meggie Gore-Steward; seemingly demure Mathilda Eastcott, and Rusty Sykes, the tomboy daughter of the owner of the local boatyard, are all in their very individual ways determined to play an active part in the defense of their country. But knitting socks and bomb-dodging are not what they have in mind.Under the tree on the green the women of Bexham meet to look back on a landscape that has changed irrevocably, and which they have in their own ways helped to alter. None of them are the same, and yet, with the men returning from war, they are expected to slip back into their simple roles of mother, daughter, grandmother. This, more than anything perhaps, is their greatest sacrifice.Only the chestnut tree planted by Corrie at the edge of the village flourishes in the accepted manner, finally becoming the uniting symbol of all that has passed forever.

The House Of Flowers The Eden Series Book 2

It is 1941, and England is at its lowest ebb, under-nourished, under-informed and terrified of imminent invasion. Even at Eden Park, the beautiful country estate where Poppy, Lily, Kate, Marjorie and her adopted brother Billy are working in espionage, confidence is at an all-time low, and that is before the authorities discover there is a double agent operating from its MI5 unit. Lily volunteers to be dropped into France, only to find herself linked to Poppy's husband Scott. Meanwhile, Kate's lover Eugene is in Sicily to sabotage the bombers besieging Malta while her mother is recruited to work for Jack Ward, known affectionately as 'the Colonel'. As further agents are wiped out by the informant at Eden Park, Poppy leaves to train as a pilot. But as she closes the wooden shutters at the House of Flowers, the old folly where she and Scott began their married life, she realises that they were made over a century before to keep out another invader. England survived then, and will again.