Jo Baker

Paris, 1939: Nazi soldiers are marching along the Champs Elysees. A young writer, recently arrived from Ireland, smokes one last cigarette with his lover before the city they know is torn apart. Soon he will put his own life and the lives of his loved ones in mortal danger by joining the Resistance....

It is wash-day for the housemaids at Longbourn House the residence of the Bennett family of Pride and Prejudice. Domestic life below stairs, ruled by Mrs Hill the housekeeper, is about to be disturbed. For in Georgian England, there is a world the young ladies in the drawing room will never know, a world of poverty, love, and brutal war.

This is a family portrait captured in snapshots. First there is William, the factory lad who loses his life in Gallipoli, then his son Billy, a bicycle champion followed by his crippled son Will who becomes an Oxford academic and finally Will's daughter Billie, an artist in contemporary London.