Trelawny’s Cornwall
Trelawny’s Cornwall

Author: Petroc Trelawny

Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Published: 2024-08-15

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 1474625118

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'I can't think of a more enjoyable or more illuminating guide to Cornwall than Petroc Trelawny, who knows it intimately, loves it deeply, and shares it generously' - THE REVEREND RICHARD COLES It would be hard to think of a more thoroughly Cornish name than Petroc Trelawny. His first name is shared with one of Cornwall's most celebrated saints, his second is the name of its unofficial national anthem. But when a stranger challenges the Radio 3 presenter on his ancestry, he is inspired to return to the lands of his boyhood to rediscover the place where he grew up, and attempt to confirm if he still belongs there. Part history, part memoir, this is a deeply felt exploration of Cornwall - past, present and future. Petroc embarks on a slow journey that sees him visit old mine workings, ancient churches, sites where new technology was forged, and places where poets, musicians, architects and film makers have worked to shape Cornwall's cultural identity. He explores the Tamar, the river that marks out the Cornish frontier, and holds a finger up to winds of change, exploring the collapse of Methodism, the decline of the Cornish language, and the complex , sometimes lucrative, sometimes destructive, relationship with tourism. As he travels by road, rail and foot, he conjures marvellously vivid figures and scenes from memory, telling the stories of a loving family full of mysteries and a landscape still redolent of 'Cornish otherness'.

House of Trelawney
House of Trelawney

Author: Hannah Rothschild

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2020-02-11

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 0525654925

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From the author of The Improbability of Love: a dazzling novel both satirical and moving, about an eccentric, dysfunctional family of English aristocrats, and their crumbling stately home that reminds us how the lives and hopes of women can still be shaped by the ties of family and love. For more than seven hundred years, the vast, rambling Trelawney Castle in Cornwall--turrets, follies, a room for every day of the year, four miles of corridors and 500,000 acres--was the magnificent and grand "three dimensional calling card" of the earls of Trelawney. By 2008, it is in a complete state of ruin due to the dulled ambition and the financial ineptitude of the twenty-four earls, two world wars, the Wall Street crash, and inheritance taxes. Still: the heir to all of it, Kitto, his wife, Jane, their three children, their dog, Kitto's ancient parents, and his aunt Tuffy Scott, an entomologist who studies fleas, all manage to live there and keep it going. Four women dominate the story: Jane; Kitto's sister, Blaze, who left Trelawney and made a killing in finance in London, the wildly beautiful, seductive, and long-ago banished Anastasia and her daughter, Ayesha. When Anastasia sends a letter announcing that her nineteen-year-old daughter, Ayesha, will be coming to stay, the long-estranged Blaze and Jane must band together to take charge of their new visitor--and save the house of Trelawney. But both Blaze and Jane are about to discover that the house itself is really only a very small part of what keeps the family together.

For the Children
For the Children

Author: David Laws

Publisher: Open Road Media

Published: 2024-04-25

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 1504094425

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A young British war widow embarks on a dangerous journey that will change her life, and those of countless others, in this gripping, emotional novel by the author of The Fuhrer’s Orphans. Helen Fairfax is a ferry pilot and the mother of Peter, aged six. From Monday to Friday she flies from factories to airfields, then returns to the family farmhouse where her parents look after the boy. She feels torn being away from her son so much, but after her husband died in the Battle of Britain she vowed to live up to his example of courage and strike back at the enemy. Now the Germans are about to launch the V-2 against London, and MI6 is desperate to get its hands on an undamaged prototype of the rocket to discover how it might be defeated. One has fallen in Poland—and Helen must pilot a secret flight into enemy territory to obtain it, accompanied by Leo Beck who, ashamed of his part in building the rocket, volunteers to assist her. But after a successful landing, they find themselves pulled into another mission. Parents beg her to fly their kids to safety, far from Nazi squads that have begun kidnapping children. It will mean defying military regulations—but that is far from the only risk she will take when she agrees to this unofficial rescue operation . . .