LAND GIRLS The West Country in wartime and the land girls are gathering on the farm of John and Faith Lawrence. Prue, a man-eating hairdresser from Manchester; Ag, a cerebral Cambridge undergraduate; Stella, a dreamy Surrey girl stunted by love: three different women from very different backgrounds, who find themselves thrown together, sharing an attic bedroom and laying the foundations for a friendship that will last a lifetime... WIVES OF THE FISHERMEN Ravishing Annie Macleoud and kind, plain Myrtle Duns have always been the closest, yet unlikeliest of friends. Their friendship has been tested many times, most of all when Myrtle embarks on the great love affair of her life, while the beautiful Annie finds only disappointment. Still the friendship survives, until a horrifying accident destroys the equilibrium, and exposes the secret sadness, jealousy and betrayal each has hidden over the years.
Angela Huth is one of our most consistently enthralling novelists, with a career that spans such critically acclaimed works as Land Girls,Wives of the Fisherman and Of Love and Slaughter. But she is also a master of the short story, as this succulent retrospective spanning thirty years reveals.Whether you are a fan of the writing of Angela Huth or of the genre of the short story itself, this collection is an enthralling, enriching delight.
The characters in Angela Huth's marvellous collection of stories are all winners or losers in the game of love: from the two friends competing in a gruelling cross-country marathon for the man they both wish to marry, to the lonely Cheltenham widow abandoning all decorum after too many Irish Coffees; from a seaside donkey owner giving away his favourite animal for the sake of a pair of sad grey eyes, to the husband taking up secret dancing lessons to please his dance-mad wife. A shrewd observer of human foibles with a fine sense of the comic and absurd, Angela Huth has written a blissfully entertaining, poignant and funny book of stories, which explore the nature and difficulties of love.
The Handles, happily married for many years, have reached the point in their lives where easy silence, an acceptance of each other's ways, is the norm. Grace has her painting, and the children's reference book she has long been working on. William has his music and his string quartet, even if his name isn't quite spelled like the great composer. Then Grace encounters a young man, Lucien, who adopts her, haunts her, threatens her - and provides her days with a bittersweet frisson. And William becomes so besotted by his new viola player, he decides to murder his wife ...
With the country's men at war, it falls to the land girls to pitch in and do their bit... Stella arrives at Hallows Farm in her Rayon stockings, having just waved goodbye to the love of life - naval officer Philip. Agatha has just graduated from Cambridge; life on the Farm is certainly going to offer her a different kind of education. Prue, a hairdresser from Manchester, is used to painting the town red, not manual labour. Joe dreams of leaving the family farm and becoming a fighter pilot. But with the arrival of these three beautiful young women, there's enough to keep him busy on the farm for the time being... Work is hard and the effects of war start to take their toll on the three women. But as the bonds of friendship start to form and excitement builds as the RAF dance looms, maybe life in the countryside isn't so bad after all?
Emily has not yet reached the age of judgment. For her, normality consists of contentment and magic and there is no possibility of change in the seeming happiness of her parents. She loves them both dearly and her image of them is together - invisible, laughing, dancing, making every day scintillate with life. When change does come, Emily is a helpless spectator, confused by the puzzle of ill-fitting events. With both poignant humor and ruthless honesty, Angela Huth has captured the inconsistencies of adult behavior, as seen through the eyes of a child who watches and suffers from them. "Sun Child" is an exceptional adult book about a child's world.
South of the Lights weaves the story of Evans and Brenda, lovers in a Midlands village, whose happiest hours are spent in the hayloft of the chicken farm on which she works. They have no other roof under which they can be alone together - until the mysterious, romantic Augusta comes to their aid. Evans' desire to possess Brenda results sometimes in passion, sometimes in violence, but Brenda finds sympathy in the company of the fragile and sweet-natured Lark with whom she shares a flat in the local town. Excelling in the illumination of the surprising facets of people's daily lives, Angela Huth reveals their private hopes, rages, fantasies and despair, with an original and moving blend of humour, imagination and pathos.
George Elkin has loyally trained as a solicitor in order to follow in his father's footsteps and run the family firm. But when his father dies, George resolves to follow his heart instead, looking after the West Country farm he grew up on. With the help of neighbours, his childhood friends Prodge and Nell, George is sure he can adapt to a rural lifestyle. Nell holds feelings for George she has kept hidden since their childhood and has long had the hope that their friendship would develop into something stronger. But then Lily, a woman George knew in his Oxford days, comes to stay and changes all of their lives and it seems that Nell's hopes will forever remain unfulfilled. Meanwhile, the rural community is facing a threat to its very existence: BSE, foot and mouth, government proposals on hunting - each crisis straining farmers and their livelihoods to breaking-point. And George and Prodge are faced with the awful knowledge that their future is out of their hands ...
Estranged from her second husband, Jonathan, Clare Lyall is less sure than ever about the role men should play in her life. Her first husband, Richard, was much older than her, and his casual disregard for youth gradually hardened into indifference. And Jonathan, if anything, was too easy - too attentive, too concerned, and just a little too pedantic. So when she meets Joshua Heron at a party, the offbeat Clare isn't exactly thirsting for love. But she is mildly impressed when Joshua stubs his cigarette out on his thumb, and swayed still further by the advice of her new friend, the indomitable Mrs Fox. 'Take a lover,' she says, 'it's better to have a lover when you're young than neurosis when you're old...' Gentle, wistful and wry, Nowhere Girl is a beautifully controlled love story from the Booker Prize winning author of The Elected Member.
A delightful memoir' Kate Saunders, The Times 'Fabulous . . . dazzling' Tatler 'Enchanting . . . movingly lyrical' Ysenda Maxtone Graham, Country Life This short volume has turned out to be merely a handful of recollections of well-remembered times and stories - some probably misremembered, too - and a few people who have played a crucial part in my life. And some confessions: I have never before tried to write about my doll phobia, for instance, or about the effect synaesthesia has had over the years. I can only hope that this collection of stories from times past might give some idea of a mostly happy life that has gone, and is going, much too fast. At the age of five Angela Huth decided she would become a writer. Hers was an idiosyncratic childhood. Her parents were known to be a highly glamorous couple: Harold was a famous actor and film director who possessed legendary charm; Bridget was known for her lively sense of humour, fluency in foreign languages and her penchant for giving memorable parties. But in spite of her parents' initial happiness, they parted after the war. Eleven years later they got back together, happily, though each would have a lover for decades. After her education ended prematurely - Bridget didn't believe in university for women - Angela Huth went from reluctant debutante to professional writer, switching from journalism to short stories, novels, plays for television and the stage. Praise for Angela Huth: 'A first-class writer' Sunday Telegraph 'There is a very strong case for Huth replacing Jane Austen on the school syllabus' Sunday Times 'Angela Huth knows her own range and writes within it; she is an excellent exponent of the traditional English social comedy . . . she is in perfect control' Daily Telegraph
This is a sparkling collection of short stories, dealing with love, loss and the tiny happenings that make up our everyday experience. Her most brilliant stories are about successful couples who own comfortable houses, enjoy interesting lives, raise attractive children - and commit adultery. On the other hand, the author is equally concerned with the old, the lonely and the hard-up, perceiving the exiguous sources from which they derive their hope or consolation and the last straws which drive them to despair. Like an experienced naturalist, she moves invisibly through social undergrowth, observing the quirks of human fauna, solitary, coupling, flocking, moulting, displaying or dying. Angela Huth has the gift of infiltrating the lives and minds of her characters whatever their age and social background.
The married couples in this book have two things in common: a skill in the duplicity that flourishes even in happy marriages, and an invitation to the Farthingoes' ball. In the months preceding the party, we learn something of their double lives: the faces that each one exposes to their spouses and to the world give little hint of their complex and secret tribulations. By the time they arrive at the ball, each clutching his or her different hopes and fears, we have become familiar with their unsmooth paths, and shared many a humorous escapade or private tragedy with Rachel and Thomas, Mary and Bill, Ursula and Martin, Frances and Toby, as well as the alluring R. Cotterman and the only questing bachelor, Ralph. Sophisticated, sympathetic, witty and razor-sharp in its observations of the sub-text of married life, this is a wonderfully accomplished and enjoyable novel which develops totally out of the characters it creates.
First published in 1996, this collection of stories tells of the ghost of a doomed romance haunting an Oxford undergraduate's idyllic summer affair; a tragedy of hopeless love and murderous frustration is played out against the backdrop of a provincial repertory company; passion and hatred flower side by side in suburban back gardens. Angela Huth peoples her stories with elderly ladies living out extraordinary fantasy lives and betrayed wives wreaking subtle revenge, drawing out their secret disappointments and their dreams of glamour; she brings to this exquisite collection all the wry delicacy, subversive wit and keen eye for the drama of the quietest lives that characterise her acclaimed novels.
Disasters, disappointments, dashed hopes ... Doesn't seem that easy, just to find a good man, love him and be loved back. But I shan't give up trying. The war is over, but life goes on for Land Girls Prue, Stella and Ag. While two of the girls are married, Prue, the incorrigible flirt, has no one and is engaged in a quest for a man to provide her with security and gold taps. A year after the girls leave Hallows Farm, Prue finds just such a man and a marriage that protects her from the hardships of post-war Manchester. But she still hankers for the life she so loved as a Land Girl, though it's hard to get work on the sort of farm that provided unimaginable happiness during the war. The lives of her two old friends, Stella and Ag, have moved on and neither visit her. Additionally Prue finds that her newly wedded state and fresh horizons fail to supply the answers she seeks. Yet, in the puzzling world beyond the fields, Prue, in her indomitable way, open as ever to each chance encounter, remains buoyant, optimistic and quite sure that the life she imagines is just round yet another corner. Praise for Land Girls: 'A first-class writer' Sunday Telegraph 'Riveting ... evocative and entertaining' Daily Mail 'Huth's controlled, eloquent style has been compared to Jane Austen's, but her talent is entirely original' The Times 'Piquant, witty and entertaining' Tatler 'Huth is a master of this sort of novel, steeped in period atmosphere and gentle irony' Daily Telegraph 'A good story, told with wit and a keen observation of detail' Times Literary Supplement
Quiet, clever, sensible Virginia Fly, still a virgin at thirty-one, harbors erotic thoughts of an intensity and vividness unimagined by her suburban parents, her unassuming elderly suitor Hans or even her virile American pen-friend of twelve years, Charles Whitmore Oakhampton Jr - Charlie. When Charlie announces that he is, at last, to visit England, it seems too much to hope that he should make Virginia's dreams of passion reality. Yet his arrival coincides with her appearance on a television documentary and suddenly Virginia is presented with a bewildering variety of opportunities to rid herself of her virginity. The only question remaining seems to be whether any of them - even the suave and delicious stranger Ulick Brand - could possibly fulfill her considerable expectations.
Harry Antlers, a once successful theatre director, falls obsessively in love with Viola Windrush when she comes to New York for an audition. He immediately sends her a hundred red roses and convinces himself that her lack of response is purely temporary. He is certain that if he makes enough extravagant and expensive gestures she will be his. There follows a wild pursuit, which takes Harry to Viola's beautiful old Norfolk house and to London, where she is decorating a flat for her uncle. Finally, Harry is driven to desperation ...The curious psychology of the obsessive is very cleverly drawn, for the reader can see all too clearly what Harry himself cannot -that his feelings are more those of a thwarted child than of an ardent suitor. WANTING's support characters come vividly to life: Mr Baxter, who caretakes Viola's Norfolk home; Gideon, Viola's brother, who leaves his glamorous and mercenary New York mistress to return to Norfolk where a young woman who has loved him since her youth hopefully awaits him; Edwin Hardley, the moth scholar known as Hardly There ...
The friendship of two women in a Scottish fishing village, tracing their rivalry for men, jealousy and betrayal. With age, hurts are more difficult to repair and when the daughter of one tries to seduce the other's boyfriend, the friendship ends.
Harry Antlers, a once-successful theatre director, falls obsessively in love with Viola Windrush when she comes to New York for an audition. There follows a wild pursuit, taking him to her Norfolk house and to London, where she is decorating for her uncle. Finally, Harry is driven to desperation.
A fascinating collection of memorial addresses on celebrated lives including WH Auden by Stephen Spender, Peter Cook by Alan Bennett, Kingsley Amis by Martin Amis, Stanley Matthews by Jimmy Armfield, John Thaw by Tom Courtenay and many more. The eulogy is a literary form like no other: to compress a lifetime into minutes, to summon the person, what they meant to their friends, colleagues, and sometimes a wider context, to be moved to grief, laughter, sadness and fond memories, to mix praise for virtue with the acknowledgement of foibles, to choose a few anecdotes from the hundreds available, is a very different art to that of the dry obituarist. Angela Huth has collected some of the sparkling examples of the form - by or about writers, politicians, actors, sportsmen, academics, and, in some cases, unknown but well-remembered friends.
Thank you for visiting our website. Would you like to provide feedback on how we could improve your experience?
This site does not use any third party cookies with one exception — it uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic.Learn More.