South Riding

Product Information

Book Society bookplate to front pastedown, related clippings tipped onto front free endpaper; cloth slightly creased and dulled at spine; jacket slightly dulled at spine with some very minor creasing, but overall a very good copy. It’s really good, so involving and inspirational – the sort of book you can sink into and enjoy as the story develops.

South Riding’s publication was completed with Vera Brittain’s intervention (her dear lifelong friend), overriding the concerns of Alice Holtby, Winifred’s mother. As you say, it’s a tragedy that this author died at such a young age, at the height of her powers with South Riding.In 1932 she had attended the public inquiry into a land purchase scandal in Hull, which had led to the suicide of a long-serving Conservative member of the council, guilty of making profits from land sales. I could go on to describe most of the cast, because they are all excellently-realized characters drawn with exceptional psychological insight, but nothing I say will do Holtby's writing justice. At The Nag’s Head, Lily Sawdon knows she is dying of cancer, too frightened to confide in her husband for fear of his reaction; at the Carnes’ farm, foreman Castle is very poorly, unlikely to see another season in the fields of the estate; in the council, Jo Astell, Sarah’s altruistic socialist ally, is battling with tuberculosis. In a very good wrapper which is unclipped and has rubbing to the edges and a little loss to the spine ends.

Without emotion, without haste, without even, so far as Lovell could discern, any noticeable interest, the South Riding County Council ploughed through its agenda.Even without the help of the map on the jacket we could identify the estuary of the River Leame and recognize the great city of Kingsport on its northern shore.