Love Among the Ruins

by Angela Thirkell

Overview

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

It's the summer of 1947, and peacetime has brought new challenges to Barsetshire. Beliers Priory, once a military hospital during the War, has now become a flourishing preparatory school for boys run by Leslie and Philip Winter.

When Charles Belton is hired as the new school master, six young people are thrown together in a web of flirtations and misunderstandings: Charles and his elder brother, Naval Captain Freddy Belton; Susan Dean, now Red Cross Depot Librarian, and her glamorous sister Jessica, an actress in thrall to the theatre; pragmatic Lucy Marling and her brother Oliver. And with the old social order in ruins, the scene is set for a delicious summer of comic - and romantic - possibilities.

Love Among the Ruins is a delightful, clever and wryly poignant classic, and the 17th novel in Angela Thirkell's beloved Barsetshire series.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780349018652
Publisher:	Little, Brown Book Group
Publication date:	07/30/2024
Series:	Barsetshire Series
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	736,371
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.00(h) x (d)

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.

Editorial Reviews

Thirkell (1890-1961) wrote some 30 highly entertaining novels about life in the imaginary English county of Barsetshire (a setting invented by Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope). Her books achieved enormous popularity for their humorous style, subtle characterization and sympathetic portrayal of a class-conscious society. First published in 1948, Thirkell's ninth Barsetshire novel is, like her other confections, a story of English ladies and gentlemen and their irrepressible children, all of whom live in such fabulous country towns as Winter Overcotes and High Rising, where they talk delightful nonsense, fall acutely but not painfully in love and in general find life worth living despite the shortages and rationing of postwar Britain. The story begins at Beliers Priory, Barsetshire's preparatory school for boys. Prominent in the charming cast of eligible young men and women are Charles Belton, newly hired junior master; his elder brother, Freddy; the Dean sisters, Susan and Jessica; and the elegant young Clarissa Graham. Woven skillfully into the daily rounds of county life, their courtships and comic mishaps culminate at the tradition-shattering fair which for the first time combines the annual meeting of the Barsetshire Pig Breeders Association and a Conservative Party rally. This is vintage Thirkell, to be welcomed by longtime devotees as well as newcomers to her engaging fiction. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly