Village Story (Paperback or Softback)

Mrs. Ethelburger, who sat down when she wanted to think, had been classed as very intelligent when a girl, but seeing her in this ramshackle house, surrounded by her noisy family (as though there were not enough children about, there were photos of them all over the mantelpiece), people had wondered: hadn’t she rather thrown herself away?

Celia Buckmaster’s sharply funny, brilliantly characterized first novel revolves around two discontented wives. Mrs. Noyce, at the manor, is a painter whose husband cherishes her art and refuses to allow her to be domestic, but now finds herself yearning for motherhood. Mrs. Ethelburger, on the other hand, has four children, but has been escaping domestic drudgery by carrying on a half-hearted affair with a businessman. In and out of these plot strands are woven the stories of their neighbours—the Noyces’ gardener, whose wife trains her cats to do tricks in remembrance of her time in a circus; the Rector and his wife, who having married beneath her is taking revenge on the world by becoming a Communist; Mr. Browning, the object of Mrs. Ethelburger’s casual affections, and his mother, who frets because she can’t stop dropping her aitches; and Linda, the spoiled village girl who imagines Mr. Noyce is making advances.

Village Story is a deceptively simple tale, with subtle revelations of human nature and tragedy concealed beneath its witty surface.

Celia Buckmaster was born on 28 November 1914, and her youth was spent in London and Buckinghamshire. In September 1937 she married Robert Gibson-Fleming, but they divorced two years later. Around this time Celia Buckmaster moved in the London literary circles centring on Dylan Thomas, publishing work in progressive literary magazines. She was also close to poet Lynette Roberts, with whom she worked as a professional flower arranger. In late 1939 Celia Buckmaster travelled to Burma and married Edmund Leach there in February 1940. In 1942, after the Japanese invasion of Burma, Celia returned to England with her new-born baby Loulou, and bought a house in the Hertfordshire village of Holwell. Celia and Edmund later had a son, Alexander, in 1946. The family moved to Cambridge in 1953 where Edmund Leach was a university lecturer. At Holwell Celia wrote her only two published novels, Village Story (1951) and Family Ties (1952). Edmund Leach was knighted in 1975 and after his retirement the couple lived at Barrington, outside Cambridge. Lady Celia Leach died in 2005.