The web and the wing

the long version

This book is set in the aftermath of the 1914-18 war, an era of unrest and social change. It opens on Armistice Day, in the Lancashire village of Ardleagh and ends at Christmas 1930, in Ardleagh Hall, home of the Earl of Eglinton. It tells of the love of the Earl's son James and Claire, whose father was killed in one of the Earl's mines. It is a love thwarted by class distinction and greed. After the defeat of the miners in the bitter strike of 1926, James leaves home to become a concert pianist in Berlin in the Weimar Republic, now a mecca of the arts, where he watches, with concern, Adolph Hitler's rise to power. Meanwhile, the Earl's sister, Amelia, who lives her cloistered life in southern Spain, a land of wilting heat, violent revolts and no divorce, is wed-locked inharmoniously to Alva, one of the wealthy, powerful class of estate-owners with close ties to the Army.