Marghanita Laski

A young woman falls asleep on an antique chair and wakes up in a strange room somewhere in the past

The Victorian Chaise Longue

Little Boy Lost

The Village

A gripping novel of a search for a lost young boy in post-war France. It has the page turning compulsion of a thriller while written with perfect clarity and precision.

Tory Heaven or Thunder on the Right

Juliet Gardiner

Sarah Russell

A short, hard-hitting 1946 novel, originally published under the pseudonym 'Sarah Russell', about sex in wartime London.

To Bed with Grand Music

Little Boy Lost...

The Victorian Chaise-longue

Little boy lost

"The novel opens in 1945. Five Britons, shipwrecked on an island in the Far East in the early years of World War 2, listen to the general election results on their radio and learn that a Socialist government has been elected. They are rescued and return home by ship. While waiting to disembark at Southampton, James prays to God to “fix the election” and let him see “the England of all decent Conservatives’ dreams.” He hears a clap of thunder over his right shoulder and once on dry land, finds himself in a society designed entirely to suit people of his class. An entertaining satirical novel"--Review.

Or Thunder on the Right

Tory Heaven

Narrates th life of the great novelist, showing her as a product of the upper-middle-class society of late-eighteenth-century England and noting her environment's impact on her work

Jane Austen

Ecstasy in Secular and Religious Experiences

Five British escapees from Singapore stranded on an island just off New Guinea are returned to Britain in 1945 expecting to find a newly elected socialist government. As the Cathartic sails towards Southampton, one of the returnees, James Leigh-Smith, fervently wishes that instead of a socialist regime he will ‘see the England of all decent Conservatives’ dreams’. His dream is realised when he arrives to find that the Tories have been elected, and he himself is the lucky beneficiary of a newly stratified society, following public revulsion to a comprehensive programme of egalitarian rule by socialist intellectuals. We follow James’ new life as a Grade A, culminating in a cruel awakening when he meets with Martin Wetherall, one of his former castaway companions, now a Grade E making a bid to escape to Ireland, who persuades him to exchange his rags for James’ dinner jacket. The society so strictly organised for the benefit of the upper classes dissolves before his eyes.

Marghanita Laski

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