Henry Williamson is perhaps best known for his Hawthornden Prize-winning "Tarka the Otter", yet he devoted a major part of his life to fiction which drew closely on his experiences during World War I, including his sequence of novels "A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight". His time in the trenches affected him profoundly and, like many young soldiers, he was changed utterly by what he saw. This book draws closely on his letters, diaries, photographs and notebooks written at the time to give an account of life in the trenches of World War I. It also affords an insight into the making of a novelist.
This novel of one man's experiences during World War I captures the grim flavour of the ordinary man caught up in a conflict over which he has no control. John Bullock is the archetypal soldier, fighting out of patriotism for a cause he does not understand and facing the terrors of trench warfare.
Experience the chilling combat of World War I from inside an early biplane in this classic novel, by a pilot who lived through the war himself. France, 1914. The war on the land is taking to the skies . . . Pilot Tom Cundall is ready to take on the enemy in his trusty Camel fighter plane. But as he sees more and more planes shot down in flames, he begins to question the war, and what, or who, he is fighting for. There is no bitter snarl nor self-pity in this classic novel about the air war of 1914-1918, based very largely on the author’s experiences. Combat, loneliness, fatigue, fear, comradeship, women, excitement—they all are part of a brilliantly told story of war and courage by one of the most valiant pilots of the then Royal Flying Corps. Praise for Winged Victory “The greatest novel of war in the air.” —The Daily Mail (UK) ‘Beautifully written with a poet’s eye as well as a pilot’s eye.” —Evening Echo (UK) “Not only one of the best war books . . . but as a transcription of reality, faithful and sustained in its author’s purpose of re-creating the past life he knew, it is unique.” —Henry Williamson, author of Tarka the Otter
The final volume, volume fifteen, of A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight. Phillip Maddison is living apart from his wife, Lucy, in the year immediately following the Second World War. He has sold his farm and handed over the proceeds in trust for the family excluding himself. Now living alone on Exmoor he is as ever haunted by the past, and his pro-German views bring him under constant fear of attack. A love affair, the death of his father, and tender relationship with his cousin's two daughters are particularly outstanding in a novel full of incident; and this final novel in A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight completes the history of Phillip Maddison while at the same time rounding off an unsurpassed picture of fifty swiftly-changing years.
Volume thirteen of A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight. In September 1939, war with Germany casts its long shadow over the town and countryside. Phillip Maddison, now farming in East Anglia, still stubbornly believes that Hitler's chief aim is the defence of Europe against Stalin; but he is engaged in a personal war on the 'bad lands' where his farm is situated, trying to subdue mounting debts and to create a fertile yeoman holding for his family. The portrayal of his struggles, both with himself and with the land, carry total conviction, as does the picture of his life in England until the ending of the Battle of Britain. 'This astonishing sequence. It is a major mark he is making on the modern novel.' Daily Express
Twelve year-old Ante (Antonia) Alganesh has a problem. It’s lunchbreak and Florence’s gang are after her. Desperate for a place to hide, she climbs the forbidden staircase to the old organ loft, where a hundred years ago a boy tumbled to his death. No one will think of looking for her there... Except Florence. Petrified, Ante watches her enemy approach, leaning on the rotten hand-rail. She shouts a warning, but it’s too late. There’s a crash – and a boy appears from nowhere, just as a door opens in the wall behind them. All three find themselves in a tunnel leading to a river bank where people queue to be rowed across by a filthy old ferryman…Forced to bury their differences, Ante and Florence accompany the strange boy, Gil, on a journey he should have taken 100 years ago through the Underworld. Making their way past the Shopping Maul and Multivice Complex, attacked by Cerberus, Harpies, Furies and the Minotaur, all this is bad enough: far worse is the doubt gnawing at Ante’s heart...Ante’s Inferno is a gripping combination of fantasy, Greek mythology and adventure, for children aged 9-12 years old. Author Griselda is inspired by C. S. Lewis and Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth. Ante's Inferno won the Children's award in the People's Book Prize 2013, and the Silver award in the 9-12 year-old category of the Wishing Shelf Independent Book Awards 2012.
The Dark Lantern (1951) was the first of Henry Williamson's fifteen-volume A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlightspanning the years from the late Victorian period to the Second World War. In it we meet Richard Maddison, a countryman working in London as a City clerk, struggling to make do on a few shillings a week. He falls for Hetty Turner, youngest daughter of a prosperous merchant, but her father rates Richard an unsuitable suitor. 'There is magic in Henry Williamson's novel . . . which raises it right out of the family saga class. The magic is of the steam train age of South London which is so lovingly described.' John Betjeman , Daily Telegraph 'Williamson's style is romantic, though rarely sentimental, and his sensuous response to nature is fresh and surprising.' Anthony Burgess, Ninety-Nine Novels: The Best in English since 1939
Salar is a five-year-old salmon returning to the stream of his birth. He faces great dangers - cruising lampreys, poachers with their cruel nets and spears, sharp-eyed otters, cascading falls - all between Salar and his goal in the spawning sands.
