Vanessa
Published on 9. October 2008
Book
Paperback/Softback
864 pages
978-0-7112-2892-4 (ISBN)
Description
The fourth and final volume of the Herries Chronicles, described as 'incomparably the best' in The Daily Telegraph is a love story of 'effortless brilliance' (Observer) which starts with the triumph of Judith Paris's hundredth birthday in the 1870's and then moves to the tragic disillusionment of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Set, predominantly, as before, amidst the grandeur of the lake district landscape, it tells the passionate and unforgettable story of Vanessa, Judith's Granddaughter and her n'er-do-well cousin Benjie whom she had sworn in childhood never to betray.
Reviews / Votes
Fiction in glorious, sweeping measure, set against wild and beautiful scenery and crowded with fairs, balls, weddings, duels, witches, abductions, murder and romance. For those that haven't yet read Hugh Walpole there is a treat in store for you. Surely a welcome Christmas gift? Keswick Reminder Walpole's hamfisted, messy and eccentric attempt at the Great Lakeland Novel still deserves to be read. The episodes - by turns gracelessly ornate and bleakly brilliant - remain strangely enthralling and memorable, their self-indulgence a guilty pleasure for the reader too. In the Herries novels, Walpole confessed, he had allowed himself to be, for the first time in his adult life, "what I really am - a little boy telling stories in the dormitory". Times Literary SupplementMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Quarto Publishing PLC
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Dimensions
Height: 198 mm
Width: 128 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-7112-2892-4 (9780711228924)
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Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Eric Robson was born in southern Scotland and has lived most of his life in Cumbria. For the last 15 years he has had a small farm in the southern Lake District where he keeps sheep. A broadcaster and television documentary maker, he got to know Alfred Wainwright uncommonly well while filming with him in the 1980s. He was executive producer of Granada's Wainwright Country and consultant for the BBC's Wainwright Walks series. He is best known as the presenter of Radio 4's Gardener's Question Time, where he sees his job as keeping the panellists from 'straying into horticultural Latin'. To visit Eric's Striding Edge website click here
Hugh Walpole was one of the most widely admired novelists of the first half of the twentieth century, and the hugely successful Herries Chronicles made him a rich man. Popular amongst, and generous to, other writers, he was knighted in 1937 and died in 1941.
Hugh Walpole was one of the most widely admired novelists of the first half of the twentieth century, and the hugely successful Herries Chronicles made him a rich man. Popular amongst, and generous to, other writers, he was knighted in 1937 and died in 1941.