Readers Are Leaders Bookshop

Northfolk, 1920. Barbara Bosgrove has lived in the market town of Melsham all her life, and is looking forward to the annual Harvest Supper dinner ball- the first since the dark days of the First World War.

George Kenneth, a fiercely ambitious man, had his eye on Barbara since spotting her with her great friend Penny, and Penny’s brother Simon. He begins a slow and steady courtship and Barbara is eventually won over, agreeing to marry a man she believes can rely on.

Little does she realise how wrong she can be. Worn down by George’s unfaithfulness during their marriage, Barbara feels she has lost all the vitality of her youth.

But Simon is not prepared to let Barbara lose sight of the woman she really is-the woman he has always loved. Her reawakens Barbara’s passion and fighting spirit, but at what cost?

When Belinda Rathbone, a New York art historian, met eccentric Anglo-Scots bachelor John Ouchterlony it was the start of a story of clashing cultures and crumbling houses. After a whirlwind romance she married the man-and his 400acre estate decrepit mansion in Scotland. In her charming and moving account of their time together she reveals her many discoveries about his strange world- not just the persistence of lino, and family historian ancient and recent, but the value of dead elms, the art of Aga, yoga with the aristocracy and the vitally important business of producing an heir…..