Valley Saga again

Claire junior starts to win beauty contests, though Paul disapproves but it gives her mother an interest. By now, the twins are getting married, and busy with the scrap metal business... but Mary, the quiet shy eldest daughter, is in love with Patrick who is the son of Ikey Palfrey and a village girl, Hazel Potter.. and he has gone abroad to travel. Paul had reared him as his son when Ikey died in the war, but Patrick is aware that he might arouse resentment in Paul's own sons if he took a role in managing the estate. Times are hard, and Paul knows he's lucky to have a separate fortune, from industry, at a time when many estate owners are selling up and men are leaving the land. Then soon after young John's birth, Young Claire having won a beauty contest, is killed in a plane crash. Her mother turns to her baby, for comfort, and then Patrick comes back from Australia and asks Mary to marry him. Simon has met up with Rachel, the daughter of one of Paul's tenants, who was married briefly to a conscientous objector during the war. She has taken to left wing politics and Simon decides to make this his mission. Patrick and Mary get married and take one of the smaller farms, while Simon and Rachel work hard at left wing causes, until the Spanish civil war breaks out. This drives Simon to join the Reds and go to fight in Spain. He ends up in prison and is only rescued by the good offices of a Tory MP. He comes home and he and Rachel are at odds; she is a pacifist while he wants to fight fascism and go to war with Germany. When War breaks out in 1939 Paul has managed the estate well and hopes that there wont be such a loss of young men as there was in the First War. His twin sons decide to give up their business lives and join the RAF which pleases him. Simon also joins up. Paul joins the Home Guard, and turns to running the estate, so as to provide food...but some of the Potters get involved in the black Market. Then a bomb hits the Eveleigh farm, killing Simons' wife Rachel who has been living there. Andrew is flying planes in North Africa, and Margaret his wife turns to Stevie, Andrew's twin brother for consolation, as he has just split up with his wife. Margaret becomes pregnant and hides out in Wales, until Steve is killed flying. Andrew is badly wounded around the same time and is invalided out.

Valley Saga

Paul works hard looking after his tenants and helping with their problems and modernising their farms. Claire produces 2 sons and 2 daughters, then war breaks out. Many of the Valley young men go away to war and never come back and eventually Paul joins up as well. He gets injured and is reported missing and is believed by most to be dead. Claire has another baby, born after Paul's last leave and she refuses to accept that he might be dead. She names the baby Jill, and goes on with her work on the estate and helping to run a hospital for injured men. After a long time, Paul is found in a hospital in France and invalided home. Claire is happy that her belief was justified. He wants her to name their new daughter Claire as she was born at such a difficult time in Claire's life. He is glad to be back in Devon, though saddened by the loss of so many young men from the estate and he plants a wood, French Wood, in their memory. During his time in France, he had run into Grace who was driving an ambulance, and then was upset when she was killed by flak in a raid. He reinvests in the estate, wanting to make sure that the estate will be able to hold its own during the post war years. His scrap business has done well during the war, and he wants to make use of the money. However in the years after the war, as his children grow up, he finds that apart from his oldest daughter Mary none of them share his love for the land. His twin sons want to go into business collecting scrap metal like Paul's father, and his eldest son Simon is a left wing thinker who seeems to have no ambition at all. Then Claire becomes pregnant again at 50 and is very depressed, because she had thought she had given up having babies.

Horseman Riding by Part IV

Grace agrees to marry Paul, after some time, and Claire Derwent, who had had hopes that as the daughter of a comfortably off tenant farmer she might attract him, decides to leave the Valley. She goes to stay with relatives who own a tea shop in a country town and stays away for a while, Grace and Paul get married but soon problems arise. She is still interested in womens suffrage which is regarded as heretical by both country people and the local gentry. Paul tries to be tolerant of her ideas but he is becoming a country gentleman. When one of the Potters is caught poaching, he is sympathetic, but Grace is really angry that the man is sent to prison. Paul loves her but finds her rebellious anti establishment views a bit difficult to understand although he is liberally minded. He becomes friendly with James Grenfell, the local Liberal politican and supports him running for parliament. Grace becomes pregnant, and tries to tell herself that her married life will be a success but she is increasingly unsettled. When she has her baby, a son, Paul has to go out to one of the farms where the tenant farmer has been having marital problems and he has been drinking and becoming more unstable. Paul is called out to find that the man, Martin Codsall has killed his wife and then killed himself. He rescues Sydney, their young son and gets Eveleigh, the foreman, to take over the farm. Grace then embarks on a flirtatio with Roddy, the young son of John Rudd who is still running the estate. HIs son is a young Naval officer who has a car and Grace is thrilled by his modernity. She and Paul have a row about it, and she walks out and goes to London. Paul is horrified and grieved, because it seems as if she has given up on their marriage already, and in Edwardian times, divorce was very rare, even among the rich. He mopes unhappily, and hopes she will come back but she does not. He is badly injured when a ship runs aground in the local bay and he leads a team of rescuers. Then Ikey Palfrey, whom Paul rescues from a life in the London slums writes to Claire and tells her that Paul is calling for her. Claire returns to the Valley and Paul turns to her, for love and solace. He decides to get a divorce and marry Claire who is clearly more suited to country life than Grace ever was. Claire is very happy with her marriage, she enjoys being the Squire's wife and loves Paul and admires him in a way that Grace never did. THey soon have several children and rarely go away from Devon. THey pay a visit to London and run into Grace who is demonstrating for women's rights and Claire although she is bored by politics feels sympathy for her ideals. Paul sympathises with Grace who is being ill treated by police and public at times, but he is not that political.

Valley saga Part II

Paul learns that the heir to the estate was a soldier who died, and now the family want to get rid of it. He meets one of the family, Grace, a beautiful young woman who was engaged to Ralph, who has died. He is taken with her beauty but is shy with girls. He decides to buy the estate and improve it, and he meets all the tenants, and takes a liking to most of them. The Potter family are former gypsies who have a farm which htey neglect, the girls are promiscuous and the sons are poachers. Paul feels a bit sorry for them and does not want to evict them. One of the richer tenants is Edward Derwent who has 2 daughters, one is horsey, the other Claire is very beautiful and he takes a liking to her, but he is unable to forget Grace Lovell. Paul settles into country life although he is never all that keen on the country sports like shooting or even hunting. He continues to have feelings for Grace Lovell though she seems indifferent to him. She is interested in reform issues and women's issues, and cannot quite make her mind up to become a bucolic squire's wife. She likes London and cultural pursuits, but her branch of the family is not that well off and she is a litlte tempted to marry someone rich. Rudd is not a fan of Grace, thinking her neurotic and not suitable to be a country squire's wife. Grace's father and stepmother both want her to settle down and marry.

RF Delderfield novels

Delderfield was a prolific writer who wrote popular history, mostly about the Napoleonic era and historical novels. The 2 Avenue novels are set from 1919, when World War One has just ended to the yaer or 2 after the end of the Second World War. To Serve them all my days and Diana cover a similar period. His Valley saga has 3 novels, and it dates from the end of the Boer war to the early 1960s. The story covers the life of Paul Craddock who is the son of a wealthy scrap merchant who has made a fortune in VIctorian London. Paul was never close to his father and did not like the scrap yard or London, and he decided to join the army when the Boer war broke out. He was injured and had to give up soldiering and when he was recovering from his injuries his father died and left him a fortune. Paul is a rather improbably good character but reasonably realistic. He is shy and naive, and doesnt know what to do with himself now that he's out of the army. He starts to think about making changes in his life and decides to look at an estate which is up for sale in Devon. He leaves his hosptial and talks to his father's business partner who tells him he could easily buy the estate but he should think about it. Paul knows that he is not someone who knows much about the country and he knows nothing about land management but he decides to go and look at the place. When he gets there he meets John Rudd a middle aged man who runs the estate for the owners, the Lovell family, but he dislikes his employers, thinking them lazy and bad landlords. He takes a liking to Paul and says that the estate while it is run down, could be profitable with a good man in charge.

Sayers' short stories

Im reading some of DL Sayers' short stories, for the first time. SOme of them are Lord Peter mysteries. Others are slightly creepy stories which seem to be about murder but end up with a different finish, and a few are murder mysteries with the chief character being the travelling salesman Montague Egg.

TO Serve them all my Days Part VI

As the 1930s progress there is something of a move to the Left, even among the middle and upper classes. David finds that quite a few of his pupils are sympathetic to the socialist movement or at least anti Hitler. THe ethos of the school is less old fashioned Tory. He and Christine both feel that in the end, it is probably going to come to war between Britain and Germany and David finds himself getting involved again in the OTC though he had always believed that he would never do anything to support a military organisation. He misses Howarth, and Algy Herries is getting older and not able to visit so often. He is pleased when Boyer, who was one of his first pupils when he came to Bamfylde accepts a job in the school. He had trained as a teacher and found it impossible to get work in a bigger school, and then he married a Scottish girl who had no money... Boyer comes back and settles into life in his old school and David has an old friend at his side. Christine is busy with her teaching and her baby, and Grace is now grown up and training to become the school secretary. She has 2 boyfriends whom she has known at school for years and David wonders if she will marry one one of them. Keith Winterbourne is an aristic gentle young man, and Hoskins has become a musician, playing with a band. Grace decides to marry Hoskins who is a cheerful jolly chap and they get engaged, as he is going into the Army. In 1939 War finally breaks out and David knows that he will soon be facing a shortage of teachers just as Herries did in the last War. a few months into the war, he finds a young man who has health problems and whose wife is also in poor health, so he can rely on him to stay out the war years and not get called up. The man has a degree and some teaching experience and David feels that history is repeating itself, though he is sad at the knowledge that many of his pupils are now in the forces and may be killed. Christine is pregnant again. He knows that life is going to be difficult but feels relief that the war has at started and Britain is on the right side.

To Serve them all my Days Part V

David is busy trying to modernise the school but without taking away its individualism. Now in the 1930s its getting harder and harder to attact pupils to a private fee paying school, and he has to work hard. Grace is growing up and going to school at a girls' school. David wonders if Christine will ever be willing to settle down in an isolated place like Devon when she is travelling in Europe and the US. Ian Howarth, still David's best friend, is getting older and has health problems, due to his heavy smoking. After Hitler takes over in Germany, Christine appears in Bamfylde with with a young Jewish German boy, whom she has adopted and asks David to taek him at the school. She is going to the US, and says that she hopes that mabye she can meet her husband who is now working in Canada... and get a divorce. David takes in the boy, and he becomes part of the school. Some time later, Christine comes back, and has discussions wiht the Labour party. However, she ends up almost splitting from them because many of her organisation refuse to believe that Hitler and Mussolini are a threat or dont want to rearm to fight them. She is disappointed that her fellow socialists are so unwilling to realise that they may have to go to war and she decides to give up politics for now. She tells David that she has managed to get a divorce from Roland, her husband and soon they will be free to get married and she' is willing to settle down in Devon. They get married and Christine tries to find a new life. She and David are happy but she realises that he has become more conservative, after many years of working in a private school, and she can't always get him to see that small schools like Bamfylde have to modernise and move with the times. David is happy and busy, but she is less so. Then, she becomes pregnant and looks forward to being a mother.. She gets a bit irriated by David's increased conservatism and his being absorbed in his work. Then, she has a miscarriage and is very depressed. After she recovers she drives off alone and very unhappy. He follows her and brings her home and she tells him that losing the baby is doubly bad because she has no work or role in Bamfylde. David suggests that she considers politics again but she is less keen on it since her disputes with the Labour party. Then Howarth suggests that since they dont have a good mistress for the junior form, and they sometimes get very young pupils, Christine could take up a teaching role. She does and finds it more interesting than she had expected, and she becomes pregnant again. Howarth's health has declined and he tells David that he has cancer and he is not going to live much longer, but he wants to die in the school, not a hospital. David agrees and Howarth moves back with a male nurse to care for him. He lives for 6 months, in his old familiar surroundings, and dies just when Chris has her baby, a son. THey call him Ian after Howarth.

To Serve them All my Days Part IV

David goes through a very difficult time. He tries to support Christine in her fight for a Labour seat, but that puts him even more at odds with Alcock, who seems now to be determined to force him out of the school. Christine's husband has gone abroad to live and she is having trouble getting a divorce, and both of them know that a scandalous divorce will destroy both of their careers. David squares up for a last battle with Alcock and there is a meeting of the school governors for him to answer Alcock's claim that he is not suitable to teach at Bamfylde. However, on the night after the meeting the school butler finds Alcock's door is locked. He calls on David as the nearest housemaster on duty, and when they get into the Headmaster's study, they find him dead, with a half written letter of resignation on his desk. They call a doctor and the doctor tells them that he thinks that Alcock has always had a heart conditon and the confrontation with the Governors and losing his case caused the fatal attack. He says that if he had admitted his health problems he might not have gotten the job. David is shaken by Alcock's death and the way that their feud has ended in tragedy. But it has saved him from having to leave Bamfylde or give up his political activities with Christine. ALgy Herries who is now a retired clergyman who lives nearby, takes over as temporary head of the school, after Alcock's death. Chrstine fights an election but the Depression means that Labour does badly, because the population are scared and tend to vote Tory. She tells David that she thinks she should go away for a bit, she has been offered a scholarship, which would invovle travelling in Europe and studying Labour abroad. She feels that if David does become headmaster he will need time to settle into his new role and it will give them time to decide if she can combine her political interests with being the wife of a headmaster. He applies for the job and becomes Headmaster and he and Grace look forward to a happy few years at Bamfylde though David misses Christine.

To Serve them all my Days III

David then gets a letter from Julia, who tells him that she's going to America to marry her boss, a wealthy American businessman. She tells him that he is meant to be a schoolmaster and he should stick to that. He is upset but tries to concentrate on his application for the headship. He feels that if Carter became head he and the science master would clash and he'd have to leave. Carter wanted to modernise the school, spend more money on science and get rid of the old fashioned image and the tolerance of different sorts of people. David goes for his interview but neither he nor Carter get the job. It goes to an older man, who has worked for a long time in South Africa. Herries tells him he's not sure about Alcock the new man but that he is not that young and probably wont stay more than a few years. As David is young for a headship that will give him time to gain more experience in his job. Alcock seems very dry and not a warm human good natured man like Herries and David becomes uneasy that the man seems incapable of humour or emotion. He soon finds that he's right, Alcock does improve the fabric of the school but he is narrow minded, and spends his time either making up new rules or severely enforcing the existing ones. He expels a pupil for gambling, and makes a public exhibtion of another one for smoking because he has a fanatical aversion to it. He seems to have no personal life, and he starts to make life difficult for the masters who do. David has always been sympathetic to the Labour movement, as the son of a miner, and he goes to a meeting when at home in Wales, where he meets a young woman from a well to do Yorkshire family who has turned to the Left and is running as a socialist candidate. He gets on with her but is disappointed to find that she is married, though separated from her husband. David is finding life at Bamfylde increasingly unhappy and is tempted to leave when Carter who has become friendly with him suggests they leave and start a new school together. He and Alcock are at loggerheads and he wonders if he could give up teaching and go into politics or support himself by writing history books.

To Serve them all my Days Part II

David takes up the job, and finds that he quite enjoys it, though he is still not well and the boys play him up a bit at first. He teaches history and English and finds that the older boys are keen to learn more modern history about the causes of the War which is still going on. He makes friends with the English master Howarth who is a grumpy but intelligent man, who smokes a lot but does not get on well with the science master who claims that he was in the army but was not fit enough to serve in France. David dislikes Carter's narrow mind and his armchair patriotism, but he is beginning to find himself settling into the school. The war ends, and he decides to stay there and study for his degree. Then he meets Beth, a young nurse, and falls in love with her and asks her to marry him. She is from a modest London family, and is not put off when he tells her that he will never be well off as a schoolmaster and that he has his elderly mother in Wales to help out, and that the school is miles from anywhere and the boys and masters largely have to make their own entertainment. They marry soon after their first meeting on holiday and Beth and David move into a rented cottage at the school. Soon Beth gets pregnant and they have twin daughters Grace and JOan. Their married life is happy and David gets his degree but when the children are small, tragedy strikes. Beth dies in a car crash; the children are with her and Joan dies, but Grace survives with some leg injuries. David is horrified and devastated. He goes through a depression but the work and companionship of the boys, and his efforts to help Grace get better help him to recover. In 1926, soon after Beth's and Joan's deaths, David supports the General Strike, unlike many of the masters and boys, and gets in a dispute with Carter who is arrogantly conservative, on the issue. Their relationship is very strained and Herries insists that they learn to work together. Grace begins to get better and David takes her on holiday to London, where he runs into Julia Darbyshire, a pretty young woman who was briefly working at Bamfylde teaching the youngest pupils. She is a war widow, whose husband was badly wounded and she has been on her own for some time. She is now working managing a restaurant in London, and she and David have a brief romance. However, she tells him when he suggests thinking about marriage that she would not wish to be a schoolmasters wife, or to live in the country. He tells her he wont give up hope just yet, and returns to Bamfylde. However things are changing there. Herries is nearing retirement age, and David wonders if he has a chance of becoming headmaster although he is very young and has relatively little experience. He and Carter decide to apply for the post.

RF Delderfield's school novel

To Serve them all my Days is one of Delderfields more modern novels and it has more independent women in it than many of his older works. It is set in the 20 years or so between the end of World War One and the first part of World War Two, and is about a small public school in Devon. The hero is a young Welsh man called David Powlett Jones, who comes from a mining family. He was a clever boy and though his father ad brothers were miners who died in a pit disaster, he got scholarships and was planning to go to college. At the age of 18, the War broke out and David decided to join up. He rose from the ranks and became a captain, but after 3 years he was seriously injured and suffered shell shock. He was invalided out and spent a lot of time in hospital, where a doctor suggested that he should try and get a job in the country, in a small community. David is shy and apart from the war has had a very quiet life. However, he agrees to try and find such a job and is offered an interview in the small country School, Bamfylde, which has trouble getting staff because it is so isolated. He tells the headmaster Algy Herries that he has no experience of teaching and no degree.... Mr Herries tells him that he would be a godsend, if he can teach at all, as most of thier masters are elderly or sick men who could not fight, and that he could study for his degree during holidays.

Silas Marner Part IV

Silas tells Godfrey wtih some anger that if he wanted Eppie to be his child, why did he not claim her when she was little, before he got attached to her? Godfrey is taken aback at this working man speaking up to him and tries to tell Eppie that she is his child and he has a claim on her. Silas says that he wont stand in her way if she wants to go, but Eppie says firmly that she likes being a working class girl and is engaged to a working man who will make her happy. Godfrey realises that he can't make Eppie change her mind, and that she has spent 18 years living like this and is not going to change to another class. He and Nancy assure the Marners that they will still help them but they leave. Godfrey tells his wife that he did wrong when he half hoped for his wife to die, and when he let Eppie go to Marner because he did not want to admit that she was his. Now he will be childless for life, and its a sadness to him. Silas and Eppie decide to go back to the town where Silas used to live, to see if the chapel folk there have found out that he did not steal the money all those years ago. However the town has changed, the chapel is gone and so are all the people he used to know, and there are now factories where the people work. He realises that he will never get justice for what happened to him there, that he must live with that, for life, but he has his more pleasant home in the country and he has Eppie, so they return to Raveloe and go on with thier lives. Silas has his reward.

Silas Marner Part III

GOdfrey asks Nancy to consider adopting Eppie Marner, when he realises they wotn have children. Nancy is good hearted but she has a narrow mind, and she has decided that if God does not give you a child, you should not try to find one by adoption. She refuses. Godfrey tries to make teh cottage more comfortable for Silas and Eppie and help them out a bit. He and Nancy are happy but they both miss having a child and he feels guilty at abandoning his daughter. Some years pass and Eppie becomes a young woman in her teens. She is good friends with Dolly Winthrop and her son Aaron who now works as a gardener for the Casses and Silas is happy with his child, who has given him love and companionship. Then, when Eppie is around 18, she and Aaron get engaged, and at that stage, Godfrey decides to do some drainage work on the estate. Nancy does not take much interest in the estate work, and he goes riding one Sunday to look at the works. To his horror when they drain a hole they find a dead body, with a bag of gold. It is Dunstan, who has lain there for 16 years. Godfrey is shocked and ashamed, that his brother was the one who stole Silas' little hoard of savings. He decides he has to tell Nancy the truth. He goes home and explains about finding Dunstan to his wife who being a very moral woman, is horrified that her husband's brother has behaved so wickedly. Godfrey then breaks it to her that the woman who died, that night years ago, was his wife. He tells her that Eppie was his legitimate daughter and he let her down. Nancy is again very shocked but tells him that if he had told her privately that Eppie was his own child, she would not have refused to take her in and give her a home. The couple go to Silas's and Godfrey returns the money, apologising for what has happeened. Silas takes it but he is shocked when Godfrey tells him that Eppie is his child and that he would like her now to come and live with him and Nancy.

Silas Marner Part II

Soon afterwards there is a New Year Dance, for the local gentry and that night, Marner sits up, trying to tell himself that his gold will come back to him. Godfrey goes to the dance, to flirt with Nancy. He is concerned that Dunstan hasn't been seen for a little while. While the dance is going on, Molly Cass is carrying her child to show her off at the ball, but she collapses in the snow near Silas' cottage. The baby toddles into his kitchen and he finds her mother, dying. He goes to summon help at the pub, and the locals call the doctor who is at the dance. Godfrey realises that thw woman must be his wife, and he goes out to see her. She dies and he wonders what to do. He is now free to marry but the baby is there and his daughter. Silas has been shaken up by the sudden appearance of a small child, and he tells the doctor and Godfrey that since the child has noone and he has noone, he wants to keep her. They protest that he is an old bachelor, but he insists. Godfrey feels releived that there is no need to tell his father that he was ever married or had a child, and he resolves to help out old Marner in looking after the child. Silas finds that his having a small child helps him to get to know his neighbours. Dolly Winthrop, a good hearted woman offers to show him how to look after the baby and they become freinds. She has a son, Aaron who is a few years older and as time passes Silas becomes a bit closer to the locals and his adopted daughter whom he calls Eppie, is his joy. Godfrey gets married to Nancy, who is a warm hearted kindly woman and very virtuous. She and he are very happy. The squire dies and no news ever comes of Dunstan so they think that he just disappeared and is living abroad. The one sorrow that Godfrey and Nancy have is that they have one baby who dies at birth, and then no more children.

Silas Marner

This is one of Eliots short novels, it is set in the Napoleonic wars. Silas Marner is a weaver who has come from an industrial town to live in a country town and ply his trade there. He belonged to a dissenting sect and was prone to fall at times into catatonic states where he wuold not know what was happening for a time. He was devoted to his religion and his friends in the chapel but was accused of stealng money by the man who was his best friend. The congregation threw him out and he left the town and went to live in the country. He became a recluse, and worked very hard at his weaving, but refused to socialise with the local people. He even failed to go to church, and they thought he was weird and ignored him after a while. The local squire, Squire Cass, has 2 sons, Godfrey and Dunstan. Dunstan is dishonest and sly. Godfrey is good natured enough but has a secret that makes his life difficult. We learn that he married a young woman of the working classes and that she is addicted to opium. Godfrey supports her and their baby, but he has had to keep the marriage secret or his father will disinherit him. Molly, his wife worries him in case she turns up some day and announces that she is his wife. He also loves another woman, Nancy the daughter of a gentleman farmer and wishes he were free to marry her. Dunstan has money problems and having had a fall out hunting, ends up at Silass cottage. He has heard the tales of the village people that Silas being a miser must have a lot of money so he decides to try to steal it, when he finds that the old man is in one of his catatonic states. Having taken the money, he sets off for home but falls into a mineshaft on the way back and is killed. Silas for once talks to the villagers and tells them his money is gone, but he gets little sympathy.

Middlemarch III

Rosy and Lydgate become engaged but he can't afford to marry at first. He becomes friendly with another wealthy businessman, Mr Bulstrode, who is related to Rosy, but feels uneasy at having to cosy up to rich men to get ahead in his professon. Bulstrode is very religious and prim and proper, but it later emerges that his wealth is based on a dubious start in life. Lydgate and Rosy marry but soon, they find themselves in debt, as both are extravagant. Rosy wants to be a society hostess in the town, and Lydgate has expensive tastes. He realises that although she is pretty and charming, she's very selfish. Will Ladislaw is now living in Middlemarch, and he becomes friendly with Rosy. Meanwhile, Causubon's health is declining and he is difficult to live with, getting resentful of Will Ladislaw. Dorothea realises that Will is right about the need to learn German and that her husband's great work will be a failure. She feels uneasy as she still cares for her husband and wishes he could produce a great book, but she's too honest to lie to him. Lydgate worries about money adn the fact that his wife quietly disobeys him so often. A man turns up in Middlemarch who is the illegitimate son of Peter Featherstone, and he visits Bulstrode, reminding the prissy religous man that he started out in life by marrying a widow whose family business was very dubious, involving receiving stolen goods. Bulstrode becomes very uneasy that Featherstone's son, who is a drunkard, may reveal his scandalous beginnings. Edward Causubon dies, and in his will, he shockingly leaves his estate to Dorothea provided she does not marry Ladislaw. At the same time, Featherstone's son dies of alcohol poisoning. Bulstrode had asked Lydgate to attend to him, and Lydgate told him not to give te man alcohol. Bulstrode, fearing exposure by the man, let the nurse give him drink and it killed him. Bulstrode's shady behaviour comes to light and Lydgate is implicated. Dorothea is hurt and upset by her husband's will, as she realises she is in love with Ladislaw but if she marries him, there will be talk that she was involved wih him before her husband's death. Mr Brooke and Sir James are horrified by the will also. Then Rosy decides to tell Dorothea that Will is in love with her, and Dorothea decides that she will marry him, in spite of hte gossip and the fact that she will lose her husband's money. Mr Brooke is upset that she is doing this, but he is fond of his neice and of Ladislaw. DOrothea tells Will that she has a modest income of her own, and she will manage as his wife. Mr Brooke's estate is supposed to go to DOrothea's son when she has one, and in the end, Mr Brooke decides to let things stand and let the estate go to her son. In due course, she and Will have a son, and he inherits the Brooke estate. Dorothea and Will go to London where Will becomes a reforming MP. Lydgate leaves Middlemarch with his wife and they also go to to London where he gives up his ideas of doing medical research and helping people and becomes a fashionable doctor, which is what Rosy wants. She and he are not close but their marriage is tolerable though Rosy still wishes for more money and Lydgate is resentful that he has given up his ideals. They have children but Lydgate dies young and Rosy marries another richer man. Rosy's brother, Fred VIncy gives up his idle lifestyle and become manager to an estate, and Mary Garth marries him, now that he is doing something useful. The chief characters end with mixed lives, Dorothea has given up her ideas of doing good by herself and is willing to help her husband. Lydgate has given up his ideals but he has managed to save his marriage.

Middlemarch part II

Dorothea's marriage soon begins to develop problems, while she is on honeymoon, she meets her husband's poor relation cousin, Will Ladislaw, whose grandmother was cast off from the family when she married a poor man, with a foreign name. Mr Causubon tries to help his cousin as he is a decent man, though stiff and prudish and not affectionate. But he and Will dont agree about many things. Will thinks that he should learn German, to keep up with the new theories about the bible and mythology, but Causubon does not agree. When they are in Rome, on honeymoon, Dorothea gets talking to Will and is a bit worried by what he says about learning German. She is disappointed by her marraige, already, beginning to realise that Causubon is not capable of being affectionate, that he is not as clever as she thought him to be. When they are back in Middlemarch, Will arrives there as well and becomes friendly with Mr Brooke. Dorothea worries about her new husband's health and calls in Dr Lydgate, the new doctor to attend him. Lydgate is forward thinking and often disagrees with older doctors, he advises Causubon to take things easier, and not to concentrate so much on his work. Lydgate is also asked to look after Mr Featherstone and gets to know the Vincy family through this. He is attracted by Rosamund's beauty, and she is also drawn to him, as he is handsome and charming. Lydgate is a poor member of an upper class family and the fact that he has aristocrative relatives makes him even more attractive to Rosy.

Middlemarch Part I

This is George Eliots best novel, it is the story of a provincial town in the Midlands, in the years before Victoria became queen. It covers a big range of society, from the landed gentry, to the poor. The heroine is Dorothea Brooke, whose uncle Mr Brooke is a landlord, who has a good heart but is a bad manager of his land, in spite of his liberal ideas. Dorothea like George Eliot, had ideas of doing something grand with her life, and she was restless at the narrowness of life for a young lady in provincial England. She has a younger sister, Celia, who is pretty and conventional and does not mind the restrictions of her life. Dorothea falls in love with the local clergyman, a well to do middle aged man, called Causubon, who is supposed to be very learned and scholarly. He is said to be engaged in writing a book. She longs to have a role of supporting such a man, who is doing valuable intellectual work. Dorothea has anothter suitor, James Chettam, who owns a nearby estate, but she refuses to consider him as a husband. Mr Brooke likes Causubon as he fancies himself as a writer, also, and he consents to the marriage. Dorothea marries and while she is away on honeymoon, Celia wins a proposal from Sir James Chettam. The other characters in the novel are mainly from the middle classes. Rosamund VIncy is a very beautiful but flighty girl whose father is a local businessman. Her brother Fred is a rather idle young man, who is in love with Mary Garth, the daughter of the local land agent, Caleb Garth, but Mary refuses to marry him because he has no profession and shows no sign of working hard or having any ambition. Caleb Garth is based on Eliots own father who loved his job as a land agent, but the Garths are not that well off and Mary has had to get a job as companion and nurse to one of Mrs VIncy's elderly relatives, Peter Featherstone. Rosamund is however a lady of leisure who has a lot of suitors, but she is ambitious and would like to marry into the gentry.

Charlotte and Anne Bronte

Anne wrote 2 novels, one about a governess, called Agnes Grey and a second about a young woman who marries a dissolute alcoholic, and leave him when he ill treats her and upset her son. It was considered scandalous to advocate walking out on a bad husband, and Anne was heavily criticised for her frankness. Her first book is rather bland, being loosely based on her own life as a governess, but wtih a happy ending. ANne was in love with one of her father's curates, but he died young, but in Agnes Grey she allows her heroine to marry the clergyman she loves. In Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Helen's virtue is rewarded when her husband dies and she is free to marry the gentleman farmer whom she has fallen in love with. Both books are very moral, with very high Victorian standards, and this can make them tedious reading. Charlotte's first published novel, Jane Eyre, has a more passionate, wilful heroine, though Jane is also very moral and proper. Howwever she has a hot temper and is willing to fight for her rights. She also wrote a novel called the Professor with a male lead, who becomes a school master in Brussels and then marries a lace maker and opens a school of his own. Crimsworth is not a very interesting character and the book is not her best but it is about her own life to an extent, about keeping a school and working in Brussels. Her best novel is considered to be VIlette, which is set in Brussels, using a fictional name. Lucy Snowe, the heroine falls in love with a middle aged school master, based on M Heger, the schoolmaster Charlotte loved in Brussels. Because Heger was married, Charlotte could not have a happy ending with him, so in her novel she killed off M Emanuel, before he could marry Lucy so the novel has a sad ambiguous ending. Her fourth novel was Shirley which was not a success, being based on the history of the LUddite riots, in Yorkshire which was not Charlotte's forte.

Emily Bronte's work

Emily Bronte led a very reclusive life. Unlike her sisters, who worked as teachers and governesses, she rarely left home and only held very short term jobs. So she had little real life experience to furnish material for her writing. She was not interested in real life, as such, and had no relationships outside of her family... Her novel comes from literary sources for the most part. She heard stories from the family servant, Tabby about local farmers and squires and their lives, which gave her a basic story for her novel. THere was a young lad who like Heathcliff was adopted by a local farmer and who took over his foster father's property, throwing out the man's heir. She also read novels and poetry which were very emotionally violent, and used the feelings in her book. Heathcliff may owe something to the criminal Eugene Aram, and something to the heroes of Byron's poems, who usually have some dark secret. HIs passion for Cathy, his foster sister, may owe something to Byron's heroes who love their sisters as Byron himself did. Byron was in love with his half sister Augusta who may have become his mistress. ALl of these violent passions were the genesis for Wuthering Heights. The other Bronte novels usually have schools or governesses in them wheras Emily's is a tale of 2 houses, and the people of opposing temperament who live in them.

Rough Music, by Nadine Sutton

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rough-Music-Nadine-Sutton-ebook/dp/B01AEQS0G0/ref=sr_1_1?crid=18GXCTQGW919B&keywords=nadine+sutton+rough+music&qid=1693668929&sprefix=nadine+sutton+rough+music%2Caps%2C329&sr=8-1 A story about a country rock band by Nadine SUtton. Its set in the 1970s and is about a band who are on the way up, and how their 2 lead singers are trying to make compromises between doing good work and making money.. and how life on the road affects their marriages and how they dabble in drugs and drink to keep sane on tour. Its not a HEA story. Its available on Amazon and is a good read.

Beds and Blue Jeans, On Amazon.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Beds-Blue-Jeans-everyday-mayhem-ebook/ This is a long story available on Amazon. Its a tale of a young singer who is trying to make it in the music business, in Nashville and how he moves from bed to bed and bar to bar, looking for love. Sam is living with a girl who has had his baby, but he is an attractive young man who appeals to women. He finds his girlfriend boring but tries to keep up their relationship, for the sake of their baby. He loves his work, and in time he and his lady start to build up a stable marriage.

Wuthering Heights Part V

Hareton has been brought up roughly by Heathcliff, because of his anger agains the boy's father, but he is not embarrassed at first by his lack of education or good manners. However as he gets to know Catherine, he begins to realise that he has missed out on a lot. He tries to educate himself, but Catherine scorns him. Hareton has an injury out shooting and is confined to the house for a few weeks, and during that time, he and Catherine form a friendship. She starts to help him to learn, and realises that he has always admired her and tried to help her, in spite of his loyalty to Heathcliff. The young couple dig up some of Joseph's garden to make a little garden for Cathy, and he is furious, as he dislikes Catherine as much as Heathcliff does. However Heathcliff tells Nelly tat he can't get up the interest to separate the 2 cousins. a few months pass and Heathcliff remains gloomy and silent, and one morning Nelly goes into his room to find him, dead with the window open.. as if Cathy had come for him. According to his wishes he is buried beside Cathy, with the side of his coffin loosened so that their bodies can join. Hareton and Cathy are engaged and plan to marry soon, and move to the Grange. Nelly tells Lockwood that the farm will be shut up with Joseph living there with perhaps a farm lad to keep him company. Wuthering Heights has been popular ever since it was written though it has attracted criticism for its violence of emotion and action.

Wuthering Heights Part IV

YOung Catherine is content with a reclusive life, but when she is 16 she meets Linton again. Edgar is ill, and so is Nelly so she begins to sneak out and go to Wuthering Heights to see him. Heathcliff stays away, because he wants the 2 cousins to marry. As Edgar is getting sicker, Heathcliff kidnaps Cathy and pressures her to marry Linton. She is less in love with Linton now as she can see that he is a peevish unpleasant boy, but she is fond of him and finally agrees to the marriage. She manages to get away form the house to go and see Edgar on his deathbed. Nelly tells Lockwood that after Edgar had died, Heathcliff took Cathy back to the farm and planned to rent out the bigger house, and a few months later, Linton also died of TB. He was little more than a child. Cathy is trapped now at the farm, keeping house for her father in law - who has inherited the Grange when it passed to his son. Nelly tells Lockwood that she wishes she could be with Cathy, but she has no choice. Soon afterwards, Lockwood decides to go back to the south, finding the cold of Yorkshire intolerable. He leaves and does not return to the area for a year. Finding himself near Gimmerton he decides to go and visit Heathcliff and discuss the hiring of the Grange, but when he gets to Wuthering Heights, he finds that Nelly is living there. She tells him that Heathcliff has died recently and the Grange has reverted to Catherine who is going back to live there soon. She tells Lockwood what has happened while he was away. Linton dies of consumption, leaving Catherine a young widow of 17. Heathcliff asked Nelly to come back to the farm to keep house and to keep Catherine, whom he dislikes, out of his sight. Nelly finds Heathcliff even more reclusive than before, and gloomy, but she is pleased to be back with Catherine and is busy with the housekeeping. Hareton Earnshaw lives in the house and is attached to Heathcliff, even though the man has all but stolen his land.

Wuthering Heights Part III

Nelly tells Lockwood that when Cathy married, Hindley told her to leave and work at the Grange, as the housekeeper, as he did not want women around the farmhouse. She missed little Hareton, but settled into her new home. She grew fond of Edgar, and rarely went back to the farm. About 6 months after her marriage, Nelly is startled to find Heathcliff has arrived at the house. He is now a grown man, handsome and well dressed and seemingly educated, he tells Nelly that he has come just to see Cathy once and then he will go. However, Cathy is so pleased to see him that he decides to stay, and he takes up lodgings at Wuthering Heights. Nelly never finds out how he made money, or got further education, during his 3 years away, and Edgar is clealry not happy with his wife being so close to her old friend. There is more tension in the house when Heathcliff begins to pay court to Isabella, who is her brother's heir, if Edgar does not have a son. Cathy is angry and jealous, and Edgar does not like the idea of his sister marrying a man of no family like Heathcliff. Nelly meets Joseph, who tells her that HIndley is drinking heavily and playing cards with Heathcliff who is winning all the time, and that he will drink himself to death at this rate. Nelly is the same age as Hindley and had been close to him in childhood, so she is upset to hear how he has become a drunken wreck. But at the Grange, Cathy and Edgar begin to quarrel over Heathcliff and Cathy who is now pregnant, shuts herself up in her room and wont let Nelly in for a couple of days. Nelly tries to calm her but Cathy becomes ill, and it seems likely that she wont live much longer. Heathcliff elopes with Isabella and they run away and do not come back for 2 months. He then breaks into the house knowing that Cathy is very ill and wanting to see her one more time. They kiss each other but argue, and Cathy collapses. Edgar calls a doctor, but that night, Cathy has a baby and dies. Heathcliff is now ignoring his wife, Isabella, having ill treated her so much that she hates him. Soon after Cathy's death, Isabella runs away and she moves down south, to escape her husband. Nelly takes on the care of the baby, Catherine, and Hindley dies, having lost the farm to Heathcliff. For several years, Edgar lives quietly at the Grange, educating his daughter and mourning his wife. THen some years later, Isabella dies, and Linton her son by Heathcliff, comes up to Yorkshire, to live with Edgar and Cathy. He is soon taken away by his father, who dislikes him, but wants to keep him to use as a weapon against Edgar.

Wuthering Heights II

Lockwood learns that Heathcliff wasnt liked by anyone in the household other than Mr Earnshaw and Cathy. She grew close to him, but perhaps without meaning to, Heathcliff bred dissension in the house. Mrs Earnshaw died and Hindly went away to college. Nelly took over as housekeeper and found the rowdy children a trial. They laughed at Joseph, the manservant, who was always quoting the Bible. Then Mr Earnshaw died suddenly, and Hindley came home, with a wife. She, Frances, tried to make Cathy more ladylike and Hindley who had always hated Heathcliff, told him he was now just a servant and was not to associate with the family. Heathcliff become sullen and silent and even Cathy cannot cheer him. She is growing into a haughty girl, but she likes to run wild with her foster brother when she can. She becomes friendly with the Linton family, who live at Thrushcross Grange and who are more genteel and richer than the Earnshaws, but who are their only social equals in the area. Heathcliff despises the Lintons, as soft and foolish and weak. There are 2 children, Edgar and ISabella, and they seem to enjoy Cathy's company and as they grow older, Edgar is clearly falling in love with Cathy. Then Frances, Hindley's wife, has a son, Hareton and dies soon afterwards. Hindley goes to pieces and starts drinking and gambling. Cathy is now 15, and seems torn between Heathcliff whom she still spends time with, and Edgar who is from a rich family and has nice gentle manners. Heathcliff is jealous and angry with Cathy, his only friend, he knows that he has lost his status and he will just be a farm labourer, unless he can find some way out of it, and it hurts him to see Cathy turning for companionship to Edgar. Then he overhears Cathy telling Nelly that she has accepted Edgar, as it would degrade her to marry a penniless farm boy like Heathcliff. Angered, he disappears into the night and leave the farm. Cathy is horrified, and beccomes ill, and it takes her some time to recover. But in a couple of years, she marries Edgar, since he is still in love with her and Heathcliff has never been seen since.

Wuthering Heights

This is the only novel written by Emily Bronte and is considered to be the best of the Bronte Novels. It is a Gothic work, about the love of a couple who are not heroic or very good people. The novel starts with the arrival of Lockwood, a city man, to the house he is renting in the North. He calls on his landlord Mr Heathcliff, who is a country squire who lives on a local farm. Lockwood is surprsed to find that Heathcliff, instead of being a romantic figure, is unfriendly, and his servants are rough and rude. He gets snowed in and has to stay the night and has a terrifying dream. On his return to his house, Thrushcross Grange, he become ill, having caught a bad cold and he asks his housekeeper, Mrs Nelly Dean, to amuse him by telling him the history of the 2 houses and how Mr Heathcliff came to own both of them. Nelly tells him that she lived as a servant at Wuthering Heights as a young girl, and knew the family who owned it, the Earnshaws who were well to do farmers. There were 2 children, HIndley and Catherine, who grew up wild, but Mr Earnshaw, their father was a strict man. He went on a journey when his daughter was about 6 and came home with an orphan child, a boy, whom he found in Liverpool. He adopted the boy, called him Heathcliff and treated him as his own son.

Elisa Bonaparte Part I

Elisa was the oldest of the 3 Bonaparte sisters, and the plainest. She was born in Corsica in 1777, a few years after Napoleon. . When the family moved to France, she secured a place in a school founded by Madame de Maintenon, the morganatic wife of Louis XIV. The school was for girls of good birth but who did not have much money, to educate them to become wives and mothers. Elisa was interested in learning and the arts, and did well at school. In 1797, she married Felix Bachiocchi, a soldier who was quiet and who became a little hen pecked. Napoleon did not think that her new husband was ambitious or successful enough but Elisa was less pretty than her 2 younger sisters and he wanted to see her married and settled. She was close to her brother Lucien who was the most left wing of the family and she and he ran a salon for literary and intellectual conversation. When Lucien's first wife died Elisa took on the care of his 2 orphaned daughters. She herself had 4 children, a son Napoleon and a daughter Napoleone, survived to adulthood but the other two died young. She was given a small domain in Italy to rule....Lucca and Piombino, and was a reasonably successful ruler though the locals resented being ruled over by a French princess. She organised charities and tried to reform agriculture and had disputes with her brother who treated his satellite states as simply there to assist France. End Part I

Country music story, set in the 1970s

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rough-Music-Nadine-Sutton-ebook/dp/B01AEQS0G0/ref=sr_1_1?crid=18GXCTQGW919B&keywords=nadine+sutton+rough+music&qid=1693668929&sprefix=nadine+sutton+rough+music%2Caps%2C329&sr=8-1 A story about a country rock band by Nadine SUtton. Its about a band who are on the way up, and how their 2 lead singers are trying to make compromises between doing good work and making money.. and how life on the road affects their marriages. Its not a HEA story.

Beds and Blue Jeans, a country music love story

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Beds-Blue-Jeans-everyday-mayhem-ebook/ This is a long story available on Amazon. Its a tale of a young singer who is trying to make it in the music business, in Nashville and how he moves from bed to bed and bar to bar, looking for love. Sam is living with a girl who has had his baby, but he is an attractive young man who appeals to women. He finds his girlfriend boring but tries to keep up their relationship, for the sake of their baby. He loves his work, and in time he and his lady start to build up a stable marriage.