1902: London Society is in a frenzy of anticipation for the coronation of the new king, Edward VII. The Earl and Countess of Dilberne are caught up in the lavish preparations, yet Lady Isobel still has ample time to fret. Her sixteen-year-old niece, Adela, tragically orphaned, has run off with a troupe of fake spiritualists; her plain yet clever daughter, Rosina, is threatening to elope to Australia - of all places - and her new daughter-in-law is pregnant with a potential heir, yet still completely untrained in the particular ways of the English aristocracy. With her trademark joie de vivre, Fay Weldon once again draws her readers into the lives and loves of the aristocratic Dilberne family, as they embrace not only a new century, but a new generation - a generation with somewhat radical views...
Fay Weldon is one of Britain's best loved and most respected authors. Novelist, playwright and screenwriter Fay Weldon was born on 22 September 1931. She was brought up in New Zealand and returned to the United Kingdom when she was ten. She read Economics and Psychology at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, and worked briefly for the Foreign Office in London, then as a journalist, before beginning a successful career as an advertising copywriter. She gave up her career in advertising, and began to write full-time. Her first novel, The Fat Woman's Joke, was published in 1967. Fay Weldon is a former member of both the Arts Council literary panel and the film and video panel of Greater London Arts. She was Chair of the Judges for the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1983, and received an honorary doctorate from the University of St Andrews in 1990. She was awarded a CBE in 2001. She lives in Dorset with her husband, the poet Nick Fox.
Fay Weldon got me through my teenage years and my twenties. I don't know what I would have done without her naughty, feisty heroines. I normally prefer the close third person narrative but her authorial voice is so wicked that it has a delicious character in its own right.
