January 2015 Guest Editor Harriet Evans on I Capture the Castle...
This is probably my favourite novel. It gives something new every time I reread it. At first it’s ‘just’ a story of a deliciously eccentric family living in a crumbling castle in a beautiful English village (and that’d be quite enough for me!) but it’s so much more than that. It’s about broken families, class, England before the war, and most importantly and daringly it’s about a young girl’s burgeoning sexuality.
A wonderfully quirky coming-of-age story, I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith, author of The Hundred and One Dalmatians is an affectionately drawn portrait of one of the funniest families in literature.
Part of the Macmillan Collector's Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition is illustrated by Ruth Steed, and features an afterword by publisher Anna South.
The eccentric Mortmain family have been rattling around in a vast, decrepit castle for years, gradually slipping into financial ruin. Mortmain is crippled by writer's block, while his beautiful second wife Topaz struggles to be a dutiful stepmother to Rose, Cassandra and Thomas. Rose needs a husband, Thomas an education but Cassandra lives for her writing. Through her gloriously witty and shrewd diaries, she chronicles the trials of family life, the impact on their prospects of the arrival of a glamorous American family, and the agonies of falling in love for the first time.
