The Village

AFTERWORD BY JULIET GARDINER
312pp
ISBN 9781903155424

'If anyone asked me to describe life in post-war Britain,' commented Sarah Crompton in the Daily Telegraph, 'I would suggest they read The Village, a 1952 story of lovers divided by class that tells you more about the subtle gradations of life in the Home Counties and the cataclysmic changes wrought by war and a Labour government than any number of plays by JB Priestley or more famous tomes by Greene and Waugh.' And Charlotte Moore wrote in the Spectator: 'This traditionally organised novel of English village life is more than a gentle dig at quirky English behaviour. It is a precise, evocative but unsentimental account of a period of transition; it's an absorbing novel, and a useful piece of social history.'

Endpaper

The endpaper is a printed cotton designed by Margaret Simeon for John Lewis in 1946. In her review Charlotte Moore praised this 'lovely Persephone reprint with a pearly grey cover and endpapers like the maids' bedroom curtains in a Victorian country house.'

Picture Caption

The homecoming of Private Bill Martin from Burma winter 1945-6 taken from We'll Meet Again (1984) ed. Robert Kee