Jane Gardam

Marigold Green, 'Bilgewater' to some, thinks of herself as plain and peculiar, an idea reinforced by growing up in the boys' school where her father is a housemaster. Groomed by wise and loving Paula, but upstaged by bad yet beautiful Grace, Marigold suffers almost comically through the turbulent world of adolescence.

In the summer of 1946 Una, Hetty and Lieselotte find themselves growing up rapidly in the months between leaving school and taking up their scholarships at University.

Titan of the Hong Kong law courts, Old Filth QC, his clever, misunderstood wife Betty, and their friends tell a tale of love, friendship, grace and the bittersweet experiences of a now-forgotten Empire and the disappointments and consolations of age.

Filth (Failed In London, Try Hong Kong) is a successful lawyer when he marries Elisabeth in Hong Kong soon after the war. But Elisabeth is different - a free-spirit, with a lust for survival and an affinity with the Far East. No wonder she is attracted to Filth's hated rival at the Bar - the brash, forceful Veneering.

A collection of twelve wise and witty stories that cover everything from ancient English folklore to modern manners.

A collection of short stories from Jane Gardam. She is a writer well-known for her caustic wit, free-wheeling imagination, love of humanity and wicked powers of observation - and for the hint of the bizarre and the surreal that she brings to her fiction.

The flag that is shown, literally and metaphorically, by these characters is always the Union Jack. Gardam's stories are acutely observed social commentaries on Englishness, its weaknesses and its illusions.