The Camomile Lawn

Escape to the Cornish cliffs in the dizzying heat of August 1939, where five cousins are making the most of the last summer of their youth. 
 
Oliver is just back from the Spanish Civil War and world-weary at only nineteen. Calypso is gorgeous, utterly selfish and determined to marry for money. Polly and Walter, brother and sister, play their cards close to their chests. Then there's little Sophie, who nobody loves. Soon the world will be swept into war again and the five cousins will enter a whirligig of sex, infidelity, love and loss, but for now they have one last, gaspingly hot summer at the house by the cliffs with the camomile lawn. 
 
 A beloved bestseller from an author ahead of her time, The Camomile Lawn is a waspishly witty, devil-may-care delight.

Perfect summer reading - escape to the Cornish cliffs in the dizzying heat of August 1939, where five cousins are making the most of the last summer of their youth.

Provides equal does of sex and repression in war-torn Britain with panache and pace

A very good book indeed...rich in detail, careful and subtle in observation, mature in judgement

Extraordinarily accomplished and fast-moving

It's hard to overpraise Mary Wesley's novel...so tingling and spry with life that put a mirror to the book and I'll almost swear it will mist over with the breath of the five young cousins

Mary Wesley was born near Windsor in 1912. Her education took her to the London School of Economics and during the War she worked in the War Office. She also worked part-time in the antiques trade. Mary Wesley lived in London, France, Italy, Germany and several places in the West Country. She used to comment that her 'chief claim to fame is arrested development, getting my first novel published at the age of seventy'. That first novel, Jumping the Queue, was followed by a subsequent nine bestsellers: The Camomile Lawn, Second Fiddle, Harnessing Peacocks, The Vacillations of Poppy Carew, Not That Sort of Girl, A Sensible Life, A Dubious Legacy, An Imaginative Experience and Part of the Furniture. Mary Wesley was awarded the CBE in the 1995 New Year's honour list and died in 2002.

A Dubious Legacy

Henry Tillotson, a generous, genial man who inherited his father's philanthropic attitude along with his beautiful house, rescues Margaret from a disastrous marriage in Egypt and brings her home to the West Country as his new wife. On the threshold she gives him a black eye and retires straight to bed where she remains, apart from the occasional malevolent outburst, for the rest of her life. 
 
Over the years two young couples become regular if uneasy houseguests, listening, speculating, keeping a watchful eye on Margaret's door until finally, piecing together the gossip, the rumours, the mystery, they find themselves and their children thoroughly tangled in the web of Henry's life...

'A sophisticated cocktail of sweetness and cynicism' - Cosmopolitan

Mary Wesley takes you by the hand and you follow wherever she takes you

Mary Wesley does it again, only more so... She marches straight into her tale, intriguing from the beginning, keeping up a pace that rarely slackens

Wesley breezes along with customary grace and nonchalance, sniping maliciously at her characters while giving them a more or less good time

Wesley's books are a delight...a beautifully crafted tale, very sexy, very funny, I just didn't want it to end

Mary Wesley was born near Windsor in 1912. Her education took her to the London School of Economics and during the War she worked in the War Office. Although she initially fulfilled her parent's expectations in marrying an aristocrat she then scandalised them when she divorced him in 1945 and moved in with the great love of her life, Eric Siepmann. The couple married in 1952, once his wife had finally been persuaded to divorce him. She used to comment that her 'chief claim to fame is arrested development, getting my first novel [Jumping the Queue] published at the age of seventy'. She went on to write a further nine novels, three of which were adapted for television, including the best-selling The Camomile Lawn. Mary Wesley was awarded the CBE in the 1995 New Year's honour list and died in 2002.

Part Of The Furniture

Seventeen-year-old Juno Marlowe has just waved off to war the two young men she has loved for the best part of her life when the air raid sirens begin to wail out across London. She is rescued from this nightmare by a gaunt stranger called Evelyn, frail and older than his years, who offers her the protection of his house and his family before dying suddenly in the night. 
 
Determined to avoid being sent to Canada to join her mother and new step-father, and still grieving for her lost lovers, Juno instead finds herself on a train to Cornwall in search of Evelyn's family. There she discovers the blossoming of an English spring into which the war only occasionally intrudes and finds at last a peace for herlself and a world in which she is more than simply part of the furniture.

'A real treat. A warm, witty, lively book' - Val Hennessy, Daily Mail

A novel whose freshness of tone, energy of plotting and sweet nature make it exceptional by any standards

Few novelists offer such a rich concoction of amoral spice and cleverness; but to judge her work exclusively on this level is to miss more subtle rewards

With its brilliant final twist, this is Mary Wesley's best yet

Second Fiddle

Laura Thornby is independent, individual and perfectly in control of her life. Her affairs are brief but delightful, her career fulfilling and she copes with her two rather peculiar relatives and the gossip about her parentage with wryness and humour. 
 
But then she meets twenty-three-year old Claude, a struggling writer, and she is overcome by an irresistible desire to interfere, manipulate and experiment - all for his own good, of course. 
 
What Laura does not foresee, however, are the possibilities that one day Claude may actually complete his novel and that she may well fall in love.

'A book that is as rich and funny as you would expect from Mary Wesley' - Cosmopolitan

Second Fiddle will delight the healthily growing number of Mary Wesley enthusiasts and offer a delicious treat to those who have yet to discover this unique author

She writes like an avenging angel, with a freshness, vigour and zest for sex (but never for sleaze) that belie her years. The lovely Miss Wesley has a steel-tipped talent

An Imaginative Experience

A train screeches to a halt in the middle of the English countryside and, observed by her fascinated fellow travellers, a woman climbs down and rushes to the aid of a sheep, stranded on its back and unable to rise. Sylvester Weekes watches with interest and noticing, as she turns, that her face is full of tragedy, the woman's lonely image lodges in his mind. But he is not the only one to speculate over her actions - Maurice Benson, former private detective turned full-time birdwatcher, is convinced that the mysterious woman must be tracked down, in whatever way possible. 
 
This is a story rich in character and wit, and powerfully moving in its exploration of the heart's pain and deliverance. It is a tale of loss, of release, of an acceptance of the cruelties of fate and of the imaginative experience of love.

'Agonising, affirming and wise, this is a carthatic, superb novel' - Time Out

She is a story-teller who knows her craft

Crammed with the little intimacies that make Wesley's novels so appealing

It is Wesley's great strength that she makes us interested in every single person she creates

The Vacillations Of Poppy Carew

Poppy Carew has just been dumped by her unscrupulous boyfriend, Edmund, when her beloved and eccentric father dies, leaving Poppy one last request - that she ensure he is buried in style by a 'fun' undertaker - and one large fortune. 
 
Carrying out his wishes, Poppy finds not only a fun funeral parlour, and an equally fun wake peopled with very generous old ladies who all seem to know her father very well, but also several eligible young men, all of whom are keen to get to know the new heiress. And when Edmund remembers the charms that he quickly forgot in the arms of his new lover, Venetia, there are suddenly too many choices for Poppy Carew...

A lively and entertaining romp through England and Africa.

Prances and bubbles along with the gay insouciance of a compulsive storyteller

Mary Wesley is high-spirited and inventive, and keeps her wayward plot moving forward at a spanking pace

Wesley's narration is as fast and surprising as ever; her subplots are well worked out and rich in detail

Once again she deploys her admirably comic skill to good effect; puncturing the pompous, exposing humbug, nudging our perceptions in the direction of the absurd

Mary Wesley

Patrick Marnham

Letters of Mary Wesley and Eric Siepmann 1944-1967

Before her death in 2002, Mary Wesley told her biographer Patrick Marnham: 'after I met Eric I never looked at anyone else again. We lived our ups and downs but life was never boring'. Eric Siepmann was her second husband and their correspondence charted their life together (and apart) with unusual candour and spirit. 
 
These remarkable letters, which were inspired by Mary's great love story with Eric, were also the means by which the novelist found her voice. Entrusted to Marnham in two size -5 shoe boxes, this is one of the great surviving post-war correspondences.

Mary Wesley

Darling Pol

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