Marling Hall - Hardcover

Angela Thirkell

3.87

425 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0241890012 ISBN 13: 9780241890011

Publisher: Hamish Hamilton, 1974

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'You read her, laughing, and want to do your best to protect her characters from any reality but their own' New York Times

Mr Marling, of Marling Hall, has begun to accept - albeit reluctantly - that he will probably never be able to pass his wonderful old estate on to his children. The Second World War is bringing an end to so many things, but the Marlings carry on as best they can in the face of rationing and a shortage of domestic help.

Into their world arrive Geoffrey Harvey and his sister Frances, who have been bombed out of their London home. Bohemian and sophisticated, they rent a local house, and it is not long before they begin to have an effect on their neighbours. Geoffrey begins to court Lettice, the Marlings' widowed daughter, but he finds he has rivals for her affections in dashing David Leslie and Captain Barclay. Observing everything and quietly keeping events on an even keel is the Marlings' sage old governess, Miss Bunting.

'The novels are a delight, with touches of E. F. Benson, E. M. Delafield and P. G. Wodehouse' Independent on Sunday

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Review:

This dry comedy of manners, set in a parochial England that was rapidly disappearing under the threat of Nazi Germany, was the first of Thirkell's increasingly dark novels written during World War II. But the placid surface of middle-class life in towns such as Marling Melicent--where a bohemian, faintly disreputable brother and sister suddenly appear and rent an Edwardian manor--remains mostly undisturbed. Thirkell, who portrayed a vanishing England, is enjoying something of a revival with many of her 40-odd novels being reprinted in the United States.

About the Author:

Angela Thirkell (1890-1961) was the eldest daughter of John William Mackail, a Scottish classical scholar and civil servant, and Margaret Burne-Jones. Her relatives included the pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones, Rudyard Kipling and Stanley Baldwin, and her grandfather was J. M. Barrie. She was educated in London and Paris, and began publishing articles and stories in the 1920s. In 1931 she brought out her first book, a memoir entitled Three Houses, and in 1933 her comic novel High Rising - set in the fictional county of Barsetshire, borrowed from Trollope - met with great success. She went on to write nearly thirty Barsetshire novels, as well as several further works of fiction and non-fiction. She was twice married and had four children.

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