Найти книгу: "Bertie, May and Mrs Fish"

A lyrical, evocative and wonderfully original wartime memoir about life on a farm in the Cotswolds, seen through the eyes of a child.‘Bertie, May and Mrs Fish’ is Xandra Bingley’s account of her childhood on a Cotswold farm, set against the backdrop of World War II and its aftermath. Bingley’s mother is left to farm the land, isolated in the landscape, whilst her husband is away at war. With its eccentric cast of characters, this book captures both the essence of a country childhood and the remarkable courage and resilience displayed by ordinary people during the war. The beauty and sensitivity of Bingley’s observation is artfully balanced by the harshness and grit of her reality.‘In the cowshed my mother ties her hair in a topknot scarf that lies on the feedbin lid. At five-thirty each morning and four o’clock in the afternoons she chases rats off the mangers. She measures cowcake and rolled oats and opens the bottom cowshed door. Thirty-one brown and white Ayrshires and one brindle Jersey tramp into their stalls…’‘Two thousand acres. A mile of valley. Horses cattle sheep pigs poultry. Snow above the lintels of the downstairs windows. Her fingers swelling. Chilblains. Her long white kid gloves wrapped around a leaky pipe in her bedroom. Knotted at the fingers. She has a lot to learn and no one to teach her. Accidents happen.'Bingley tells her tale in a startling voice which captures the universe of a child, the unforgiving landscape and the complicated adult world surrounding her. Her acute observation, and her gift for place, people, sound and touch make this a brilliantly authentic and evocative portrait.

A remarkable, sparkling historical novel by the author of A Catch of Consequence.Two women, both searching for apparently missing people, meet in the chaos of wartime Plymouth. Britain is at war with the French and the rebellious American colonies. But where the French captured by the British navy are recognized prisoners of war, the Americans are the non-combatants of their era.Diana Stacpoole a young aristocrat recently saved by the death of her husband from a brutal marriage, is searching for the imprisoned son of a colonial friend: Makepeace Burke, a self-made woman, is looking for her daughter and companions, rescued from their destroyed ship but somehow lost on arrival in Britain.The journey of discovery both women make through docks and prisons, government offices and brothels, palatial houses and smugglers hideaways, not only allows them to find the missing persons but also to forge an unlikely friendship and to find remarkable lovers. Finding liberty for others leads them to splendid liberty for themselves.

London, 1795Lady Leticia Blake has wealth, beauty and, most important of all, numerous marriage proposals. Tish knows precisely what she wants in a husband: a man who can fulfill her deepest, darkest and most unladylike fantasies.But as a respectable debutante, she has no means to test her admirers’ arts in the bedchamber. Not unless she turns the tables and takes liberties with them – starting with tempting Viscount Nash Langston.