Editions

A Dubious Legacy

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...

Reviews

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

    Kate Kellaway, Observer

  • 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

    Literary Review

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

    Financial Times

  • Lively and entertaining

    The Times

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

    Sunday Times (Perth)

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About the Author

Mary Wesley

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.

Mary Wesley

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