Marghanita Laski

This story of a man’s search for his son, lost in the chaos of post-war France, is also the story of his search for himself and his lost capacity for love.

Melanie, a rather spoilt young woman recovering from TB, goes to sleep one afternoon on a Victorian chaise-longue she picked up in an antique shop, and wakes to find herself imprisoned in the body of her alter ego, Milly, ninety years before.

The Village begins on the very day the war ended. Two women, Wendy and Edith, who have been firm friends during the war, go as usual to the Red Cross Post. Here they spend the night as they always had done, chatting over a cup of tea. As dawn breaks they lock the door but still they linger, unwilling finally to end this night and the years behind it. This story is about the old and the new and the promise that a new labour government brought of a fairer future for all and no going back to the inequalities of the pre-war world.