Margaret Bacon: 10 books

From the early days of her childhood in the Yorkshire Dales, Nell Thorpe learnt through bitter experience that she shouldn't allow herself to become reliant on any man. So when she meets Gregory Nansen on a skiing holiday, she refuses, despite her growing love for him, to sacrifice her cherished independence;...

When the author's husband, a civil engineer, told her they were going to Guyana. she replied: "Wonderful. I've always wanted to go to Africa", a self-critical comment she quotes to indicate how little is known about the country She spent two years there in Georgetown on the narrow...

After the horrors of the First World War, the Arndales, like so many others, must start again.Northrop Hall itself has been turned into a rehabilitation home for returning soldiers, under the direction of Diana's tireless husband, the good doctor James Bramley. Diana is proud of James...

Eglantine Thorpe belonged to that generation of women deprived of husbands and lovers by the First World War in which half a million young men were killed. These women were the Maiden Aunts of the century,expected to look after other women's children and, as unmarried daughters care for their elderly...

Who hasn't dreamed of a holiday free of grown-ups and rules? For the Packet children that dream suddenly comes true when their mother's friend Cynthia, who lives in the south of France, offers the family the use of two ancient caravans in a field near her house. Their mother has just got a job, so...

In the final volume of the Northrop Hall trilogy, the Crawley children are living with their mother in the village of Netherby, safely away from Gradby, an industrial town where bombs are expected to fall. Their father, involved in war work in London, is an infrequent visitor. Remote from the...

In the first years of the twentieth century life at Northrop Hall - carries on as it has always done under the watchful eye of the dowager Lady Arndale. Her son Charles now runs the estate as his father had done before him, supported by his amenable wife Elspeth, who models herself on her mother-in-law....

Although Polly Adams was only seven when her mother left home, she immediately took responsibility for her younger brother, Jimmy. But she never forgave her mother, whom she had loved and trusted, for abandoning them.When war broke out they were evacuated, with the school, to the Yorkshire...

Judith Delaney and Alice Dowerthwaite have that rare thing: a friendship which survives their different life styles and aspirations.At school together in the Yorkshire Dales, their paths suddenly divide when Judith leaves to go and live with her father, an academic lawyer. She grows up to be...

When successful business man, Grover Blackford – described by his wife as sixteen stone of solid selfishness – falls to his death from the mountain fortress of Sigiria in Sri Lanka, it could have been a tragic accident. On the other hand none of the people with him had reason to regret...