The House

The House

â€˜Wonderfully complicated, funny and movingâ€™ - Julian Fellowes
â€˜Mitfordesque affection and brioâ€™ Valerie Grove, - The Times

The year is 1945, and people the world over are celebrating the end of the Second World War.

But for Sydney Otterton, the end of hostilities means a return to a different kind of burden: the crumbling country estate he has inherited.

He may have managed to persuade his wife Priscilla that moving in with their children is the right and proper thing to do, but how easy will it be?

With the prospect of vast death duties looming over the household, plus upkeep to the freezing rooms and ongoing rationing after the war, just making ends meet may be an even tougher battle than the one he has just fought.

Then thereâ€™s Sydneyâ€™s vindictive mother Lilian to contend with, plus some dubious lodgers, a frightening Mamzelle, a butler who is a little too fond of the bottle, and an elderly Polish historian intent on writing the familyâ€™s colourful history.

Thank goodness for housekeeper Annie Jerrold, one of the few sane voices in the house.

But when some sinister letters from the past turn up, it seems there are even more skeletons in the closet.

What will become of the Ottertons in their majestic, fading, family mansion? Why does Lilian Otterton persist in acting so strangely? And will the family ever find a way of living the life of their ancestors in the latter half of the twentieth century?

A deliciously unsentimental portrait of the harder realities of life in a grand country house, from the pen of Teresa Waugh.

Praise for The House :

â€˜Wonderfully complicated, funny and movingâ€™ - Julian Fellowes

â€˜A delightful and surprisingly touching novel. The plot is high-spirited, enjoyable nonsense â€” rather like Wilkie Collins crossed with Nancy Mitfordâ€¦But this literary bagatelle has unexpected depth and emotional resonance. It is written with winning and warming affection â€¦ it is both frothy and unexpectedly emotionally powerfulâ€™ - Caroline Moore, Sunday Telegraph

â€˜A dispassionate, yet affectionate study of the country-house, Upstairs Downstairs set-up whose death knell was sounded by the Second World Warâ€¦Teresa Waugh brilliantly evokes the hermetically sealed world of the village estate, where the postmistress listens to everyoneâ€™s telephone conversations, an umbrella is an object worthy of retrieval when mislaid and Annie canâ€™t imagine anywhere without elmsâ€™ - Jane Charteris, Literary Review

â€˜The House is beguiling and astringent, a celebration not a lamentâ€™ - Matthew Dennison, Country Life

â€˜ Teresa Waugh introduces us to the rougher side of country house living at the end of the second world warâ€¦Within the powerful framework of The House an odd, sinister story is told through the diaries and letters of four of the six charactersâ€¦Itâ€™s a compulsive read and very funnyâ€™ - Clayre Percy, Spectator

â€˜A superb comic melodrama unfolds through the diaries and letters of four main charactersâ€™ Val Hennessy, Daily Mail

Teresa Waugh was born in 1940, the only daughter of the late sixth Earl of Onslow, KBE, MC, and she spent her childhood in the family home at West Clandon, Surrey. In 1978, she obtained a First Class degree in French and Italian at the University of Exeter, and she has since translated several books. She is the author of Sylviaâ€™s Lot, The Gossips, and Song at Twilight. She currently resides in Somerset and has four children.

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Country USA
Manufacturer Lume Books
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2016-01-11
Format Kindle eBook

â€˜Wonderfully complicated, funny and movingâ€™ - Julian Fellowes
â€˜Mitfordesque affection and brioâ€™ Valerie Grove, - The Times

Praise for The House :

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Country	USA
Manufacturer	Lume Books
Binding	Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate	2016-01-11
Format	Kindle eBook

The House

â€˜Wonderfully complicated, funny and movingâ€™ - Julian Fellowes â€˜Mitfordesque affection and brioâ€™ Valerie Grove, - The Times

Praise for The House :

You might also like...

â€˜Wonderfully complicated, funny and movingâ€™ - Julian Fellowes
â€˜Mitfordesque affection and brioâ€™ Valerie Grove, - The Times