The Restoration Adventures of Two Young Optimists and a Crumbling Old Mansion

Castles In The Air

The romantic tale of one couple's escape from the city to restore their dream home in the country

Hugely enjoyable ... Corbett writes with great style and energy

A fascinating account of leaving London for the wilds of North Wales to restore a crumbling castle

Beautifully descriptive, this is a tale that reverberates with romance, suspense and great humour

Judy Corbett is an antiquarian bookbinder. Her husband Peter Welford is an architectural historian and painter. Despite its glittering history (monarchs from King Charles I to Queen Mary have stayed here) and its grand dimensions - about 10,000 square feet divided into fifty rooms - Gwydir is very much the Welford's home.

Castles in the Air is a beautifully written, autobiographical story of rescuing an ancient mansion. Gwydir Castle was inhabited by ravers and rats until Judy Corbett and her husband Peter Welford found and acquired this 500-year-old house mouldering in the foothills of Snowdonia. Despite the toads, strange smells and squatters, they decided to mortgage themselves to the hilt to bring the castle back to life. 
 
This is an evocatively written and genuinely moving book and is infused with an extraordinary sense of place. The couple's adventures in a gothic wonderland lead them through plots both supernatural and historical. In a museum storeroom in a Bronx warehouse they find a missing room, in the castle's Solar Tower the ghost of a young woman appears and from the far edges of the woods a silent man called Sven emerges to befriend the couple and their beloved castle. 
 
For everyone who has ever wanted to live in a glorious house or escape from the mundanity of life - Castles in the Air is pure magic.

Judy Corbett

A deliciously dark tale ... rich with atmosphere and foreboding

What happens when your beloved only daughter's friend turns out to be a destructive cuckoo in the nest? When girlish charm turns to seduction and teenage friendship to manipulation. How can just one teenage girl wreak havoc on a decent, loving household? 
 
Envy is a uniquely absorbing novel focusing on two teenage girls. Isabel the charmed, golden daughter of a wealthy, devoted daddy, and Diane, whose bitter, downtrodden mother lives on a rented cottage on Isabel's family's land. They become friends and Diane, our compelling narrator, driven by her loveless childhood and terrible envy, manoeuvres her way into the family, and slowly begins to break them apart. 
 
Running through this suspensful, shocking novel, are undertones of heat, sexuality and betrayal. After her highly acclaimed account of life in a medieval castle, Envy shows Judy Corbett to be a novelist of unusual precision and style. A distinctive writer who reveals the malice in youth and the destructiveness of love. 
 
Envy is a powerful, gripping read and darkly enjoyable twist on the coming-of-age novel.

Envy

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