A novel centering on Freddie, the proprietress of the Temple Stage School, and her schemes, pupils and theatrical ambitions for the national institution which supplies the West End theatres with juveniles for everything from Shakespeare to pantomime.
Shortlisted for the Booker prize in 1978 this novel centres on Florence Green, a middle-aged widow and her attempts to run a bookshop in a small East Anglian town.
Charlotte Mew was a poet with a formidable reputation. Outwardly, she also was a dutiful daughter living at home with an ogre of a mother. However, proprieties had to be observed and no one could know that they had no money, that two siblings were insane...