Before Lunch by Angela Thirkell

Before Lunch by Angela Thirkell

Jack Middleton likes to imagine himself a country squire. At weekends he retires to Laverings Estate with his wife, Catherine. He may be pompous, and they may seem ill-matched, but the couple are devoted to each other.

When Jack's widowed sister, Lilian, and her two stepchildren arrive to spend the summer in the neighbouring house, he dreads the intrusion to his idyll: Daphne, capable and ambitious, is too lively for his taste, whereas her brother Denis, a composer, he finds a crashing bore. But their wit and good sense charm the residents of Barchester, and they win over Lord Bond with an impromptu Gilbert and Sullivan evening. Even Jack begins to thaw.

Before long, Daphne and Lord Bond's son become attracted to each other, but each believes the other is attached to someone else. Can disaster be averted before she marries the wrong man?

First published in 1939, Before Lunch is a sparkling comedy from Angela Thirkell's much-loved classic series.

You read her, laughing, and want to do your best to protect her characters from any reality but their own * New York Times *
The novels are a delight, with touches of EF. Benson, E. M. Delafield and P. G. Wodehouse -- Christopher Fowler * Independent on Sunday *
Charming, very funny indeed. Angela Thirkell is perhaps the most Pym-like of any twentieth-century author, after Pym herself -- Alexander McCall Smith

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.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780349007403
ISBN 10	0349007403
Title	Before Lunch
Author	Angela Thirkell
Series	Virago Modern Classics
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Little, Brown Book Group
Year published	2016-05-05
Number of pages	320
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.