The Camomile Lawn

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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.

‘Instantly seductive…wise and funny....supremely entertaining’ Guardian

Oliver is just back from the Spanish Civil War and world-weary at only nineteen. Calypso is gorgeous, 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 once more into war and the cousins will enter a whirlwind of sex, fear, survival and loss. But, for now, they have one last sun-drenched summer on the house by the cliffs with the camomile lawn.

A beloved bestseller from an author ahead of her time, The Camomile Lawn is a moving, witty, devil-may-care delight.

‘Provides equal doses of sex and repression in war-torn Britain with panache and pace’ The Times

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

With her light touch and uncensored imaginative range, Mary Wesley illuminates the violence and vividness of youth, the griefs and losses of age, the transience of life and of all the people and places we best know and love.
Guardian

About 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.

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