Henry Williamson And The Fww

The classic story of an otter living in the Devonshire countryside which captures the feel of life in the wild as seen through the otter's own eyes.

Henry Williamson is perhaps best known for his Hawthornden Prize-winning "Tarka the Otter", yet he devoted a major part of his life to fiction which drew closely on his experiences during World War I, including his sequence of novels "A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight". His time in the trenches affected him profoundly and, like many young soldiers, he was changed utterly by what he saw. This book draws closely on his letters, diaries, photographs and notebooks written at the time to give an account of life in the trenches of World War I. It also affords an insight into the making of a novelist.

The final volume, volume fifteen, of A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight. Phillip Maddison is living apart from his wife, Lucy, in the year immediately following the Second World War. He has sold his farm and handed over the proceeds in trust for the family excluding himself. Now living alone on Exmoor he is as ever haunted by the past, and his pro-German views bring him under constant fear of attack. A love affair, the death of his father, and tender relationship with his cousin's two daughters are particularly outstanding in a novel full of incident; and this final novel in A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight completes the history of Phillip Maddison while at the same time rounding off an unsurpassed picture of fifty swiftly-changing years.

This novel of one man's experiences during World War I captures the grim flavour of the ordinary man caught up in a conflict over which he has no control. John Bullock is the archetypal soldier, fighting out of patriotism for a cause he does not understand and facing the terrors of trench warfare.

Published to coincide with the 80th anniversary of the end of WW1, A Patriot's Progress presents a uniquely detailed account of life in the trenches.

The Dark Lantern (1951) was the first of Henry Williamson's fifteen-volume A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlightspanning the years from the late Victorian period to the Second World War. In it we meet Richard Maddison, a countryman working in London as a City clerk, struggling to make do on a few shillings a week. He falls for Hetty Turner, youngest daughter of a prosperous merchant, but her father rates Richard an unsuitable suitor. 'There is magic in Henry Williamson's novel . . . which raises it right out of the family saga class. The magic is of the steam train age of South London which is so lovingly described.' John Betjeman , Daily Telegraph 'Williamson's style is romantic, though rarely sentimental, and his sensuous response to nature is fresh and surprising.' Anthony Burgess, Ninety-Nine Novels: The Best in English since 1939

Twelve year-old Ante (Antonia) Alganesh has a problem. It’s lunchbreak and Florence’s gang are after her. Desperate for a place to hide, she climbs the forbidden staircase to the old organ loft, where a hundred years ago a boy tumbled to his death. No one will think of looking for her there... Except Florence. Petrified, Ante watches her enemy approach, leaning on the rotten hand-rail. She shouts a warning, but it’s too late. There’s a crash – and a boy appears from nowhere, just as a door opens in the wall behind them. All three find themselves in a tunnel leading to a river bank where people queue to be rowed across by a filthy old ferryman…Forced to bury their differences, Ante and Florence accompany the strange boy, Gil, on a journey he should have taken 100 years ago through the Underworld. Making their way past the Shopping Maul and Multivice Complex, attacked by Cerberus, Harpies, Furies and the Minotaur, all this is bad enough: far worse is the doubt gnawing at Ante’s heart...Ante’s Inferno is a gripping combination of fantasy, Greek mythology and adventure, for children aged 9-12 years old. Author Griselda is inspired by C. S. Lewis and Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth. Ante's Inferno won the Children's award in the People's Book Prize 2013, and the Silver award in the 9-12 year-old category of the Wishing Shelf Independent Book Awards 2012.