County Chronicle

Name: County Chronicle
Brand: Hachette UK
Availability: InStock
Author: Angela Thirkell
ISBN: 9781405560320

Author: Angela Thirkell

Narrator: Catrin Walker-Booth

Unabridged: 13 hr 16 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Published: 04/10/2025

Categories: Fiction, Classic, Humorous

Synopsis

'You read her, laughing, and want to do your best to protect her characters from any reality but their own' New York Times

The county of Barsetshire is aflutter with preparations. With the wedding of Lucy Marling and Sam Adams fast approaching, and Lucy's brother Oliver brooding over his ill-fated tendre for glamorous Jessica Dean, Mrs Marling calls for reinforcements. Help arrives in the form of charming writer Isabel Dale, still mourning the loss of her fiancé on D-Day - and in need of her own fresh start. Meanwhile, social barriers are crumbling at Omnium Castle, where theatrical rehearsals are bringing together the newly married Brandons and the impoverished Duke's children, Lady Cora and Lord Silverbridge. The stage is set for a season of new alliances, old friends and second chances.

A sparkling and deeply affectionate portrait of post-war England, County Chronicle follows The Old Bank House in Angela Thirkell's beloved Barsetshire series.

About Angela Thirkell

Angela Thirkell (1890-1961) was the eldest daughter of John William Mackail, a Scottish classical scholar and civil servant, and Margaret Burne-Jones. Her relatives included the pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones, Rudyard Kipling and Stanley Baldwin, and her grandfather was J. M. Barrie. She was educated in London and Paris, and began publishing articles and stories in the 1920s. In 1931 she brought out her first book, a memoir entitled Three Houses, and in 1933 her comic novel High Rising - set in the fictional county of Barsetshire, borrowed from Trollope - met with great success. She went on to write nearly thirty Barsetshire novels, as well as several further works of fiction and non-fiction. She was twice married and had four children.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Cynthia on March 07, 2018

Isabel Dale is just another quiet but kind Thirkell hero who earns the love of an excellent man and gets a surprise thanks to the characters of Trollope's Dr Thorne — and she's a successful thriller writer on top of it all. Lucky girl. And Mrs Brandon manages to escape her selfish son Francis with a......more

Goodreads review by Mbuye on July 02, 2023

This is the first book of Angela Thirkell's where the sense of having missed some of the events in earlier books really tells. It is a standalone; it has a complete and happy ending. Rather, it is so good that a wish to have known some of the people before, follows you, as if they were pleasant stra......more

Goodreads review by Elizabeth on December 16, 2020

I really enjoyed this one. I love the progression of the novel and how it moves seamlessly from Lucy to Isabel to Mrs. Brandon and then back and forth between the last two for the second half of the book. Isabel was a new character and she was lovely. I especially enjoyed her relationship with the s......more

Goodreads review by Mela on March 31, 2023

The Vicar, who was a very nice worthy man but so dull that we shall not trouble to invent a name for him... I simply adore Thirkell's wit, metaphors, and style of writing. It is always a pure pleasure going back into her world. Its escapism will never disappoint me. Although it was not one of the......more

Goodreads review by Alisha on July 23, 2014

Deliciously delightful. Angela Thirkell does it again. Lots of characters as usual, but I've now reached the point where I don't have to refer to my Thirkell encyclopedia, so well do I know most of them. Book opens with the contemplation of a marriage between two people of a "certain age" who, in the......more