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First published in 1992, A Rather English Marriage tells of Roy Southgate and Reginald Conynghame-Jervi, who have nothing in common but their loneliness and their wartime memories. Roy, a retired milkman and Reggie, a former RAF Squadron Leader, are widowed on the same day. To assuage their grief, the vicar arranges for Roy to move in with Reggie as his unpaid manservant. To their surprise, they form a strange alliance, based on obedience, need and the strangeness of single life. Then Reggie meets Liz, a vibrant but near-bankrupt woman of irresistible appeal, while Roy and his son's family grow gradually closer. Marriage, it seems, however far from ideal, can be a great protector against isolation.
Life for the newly widowed Harriet Capel is not expected to hold any surprises. It will be spent watching over the vicissitudes of her children's marriages and relationships, and looking after the grandchildren. That is, until she sees Oliver Gaunt again. He is her daughter-in-law's father. The relationship between the parents-in- law has always been difficult since their children's wedding day and few words have been spoken. When they meet, they do not at first recognise one another, but the physical attraction between them is powerful and instantaneous. As their love affair gathers intensity and pace, so do its consequences for the family as a whole.ÿ
Long light evenings, swimming and tennis, striped cotton frocks...it's summer term at Raeburn. New arrival Constance King hates her boarding school on sight, yet dreams of being accepted by the other girls. Instead, she finds a ferment of frustrated hopes mingled with excited expectations...
It was called the London Season, and for three centuries it had been a time of fashionable suppers and brilliant balls that introduced England's most aristocratic and eligible girls to society. Though by 1939 the stately gavottes and minuets had long since given way to waltzes and fox-trots, the cream of young womanhood still curtsied low before the Queen and then went out to dance the night away with the young men they would one day marry. But the Season of 1939 was different: it was to be the last. And like many a finale, it lives on in memory as a lovely, enchanted dream, all the more beautiful for the horror and destruction that would follow so soon. Based on a wealth of first-hand reminiscences, press clippings, and memorabilia, 1939: The Last Season of Peace is a fascinating portrait of this fairy tale about to end. Itcaptures the end of an era as it recreates a world whose inhabitants still believed in empire and tradition. It is a vivid picture of a generation suspended in a brief moment of sunlit summer glory, before the gathering storm of World War II swept it all away.
Featuring 32 pages of intimate home photos, this authoritative biography on Hitler's famous mistress is based on detailed new research and opens a new window on the life at the cold heart of the Nazi leadership.
"Laura King is a liberated, intelligent and successful woman: successful not only in her career but also with men. Although she has never married, hers has been an active and emotionally fulfilled life. Suddenly, at the age of forty-four, she learns that she is suffering from a rare liver disease and has only a year or two to live. In typically flamboyant style, Laura invites her ex-lovers to dinner. There she announces the unusual part they are to play in her final months. As The Constant Mistress unravels Laura's past, racing against time, Angela Lambert focuses on the relationships between men and women, sisters, parents and friends. Laura's last months concentrate her mind both on the tug between domesticity and freedom, between fidelity and desire, and, above all, on the experience and aftermath of passion. In a novel that is witty and moving, Angela Lambert reveals the dilemmas of the privileged generation of women who came to adulthood after the Pill but before Aids. 'A compulsive read...funny, observant and very real' Beryl Bainbridge 'Lambert refuses to shirk the no-go areas of a woman's life and lust, passion and death. The writing is compelling and the reader, w
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Gritty, complex and effortlessly chilling, Brolly’s Dead Eyed is a grisly crime thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat. DCI Michael Lambert thought he’d closed his last case... Yet when he’s passed a file detailing a particularly gruesome murder, Michael knows that this is no ordinary killer at work.
With the exception of sleep, humans spend more of their lifetimes on work than any other activity. It is central to our economy, society, and the family. It underpins our finances and our sense of meaning in life. Given the overriding importance of work, we need to recognize a profound transformation in the nature of work that is significantly altering lives: the incoming tidal wave of shadow work. Shadow work includes all the unpaid tasks we do on behalf of businesses and organizations. It has slipped into our routines stealthily; most of us do not realize how much of it we are already doing, even as we pump our own gas, scan and bag our own groceries, execute our own stock trades, and buil...