‘Elizabeth Taylor is finally being recognized as an important British author: an author of great subtlety, great compassion and great depth.’ Sarah Waters
Writing stories that are extravagant and fanciful, fifteen-year old Angel retreats to a world of romance, escaping the drabness of provincial life. She knows she is different, that she is destined to become a feted authoress, owner of great riches and of Paradise House . . .
After reading The Lady Irania, publishers Brace and Gilchrist are certain the novel will be a success, in spite of – perhaps because of – its overblown style. But they are curious as to who could have written such a book. An elderly lady, romanticizing behind lace curtains? A mustachioed rogue? They were not expecting it to be the pale, serious teenage girl, sitting before them without a hint of irony in her soul.
‘Her stories remain with one, indelibly, as though they had been some turning-point in one’s own experience’ Elizabeth Bowen
There for the Duration
‘It changed my life!’ people sometimes exclaim about a book. While I am fairly certain that has never happened to me, a book certainly changed my book. In the summer of 2004 I had finished...
Read moreHands across the Tea-shop Table
The novel is set in the 1920s and 1940s. Both world wars are elided, the one before it opens, the other between one chapter and the next, but in the background is the fierce struggle of the...
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