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Westwood - Stella Gibbons

Westwood

By: Stella Gibbons, Lynne Truss (Introduction by)

Paperback | 4 August 2011 | Edition Number 1

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A delightful tale of wartime romance and friendship.

Set in wartime Highgate, Westwood tells the story of Margaret Steggles, a plain bookish girl whose mother has told her that she is 'not the type that attracts men'. What she lacks for in looks she makes up for with a romantic nature and cultural aspirations - she goes to concerts at the National Gallery and is a devotee of the modern drama. By contrast, Margaret's best friend Hilda has a sunny temperament and effortlessly attractive. Hilda's many 'boys' are always 'ever so cheery'. When Margaret finds a ration book in Hampstead Heath the playwright Gerard Challis enters both their lives. Challis is delighted with his own work and lines such as, 'Suffering is the anvil upon which the crystal sword of integrity is hammered'. He has no use for humour, 'he had more than once publicly and severely put it in its place (where, with Shakespeare and Jane Austen, it stayed).' Margaret slavishly adores Challis and his artistic circle; Challis idolises Hilda for her hair, her eyes and Hilda find's Gerard's romantic overtures a bit of a bind.This is a delightfully wistful tale of romantic entanglements and self-reliance.

About the Author

Stella Gibbons was born in London in 1902. She went to the North London Collegiate School and studied journalism at University College, London. She then worked for ten years on various papers, including the Evening Standard. Stella Gibbons is the author of twenty-five novels, three volumes of short-stories, and four volumes of poetry. Her first publication was a book of poems The Mountain Beast (1930) and her first novel Cold Comfort Farm (1932) won the Femina Vie Heuruse Prize for 1933. Amongst her works are Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm (1940) Westwood (1946), Conference at Cold Comfort Farm (1959) and Starlight (1967). She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1950. In 1933 she married the actor and singer Allan Webb. They had one daughter. Stella Gibbons died in 1989.
Industry Reviews
Westwood captures the heart, right from its opening pages... as an account of what it was like to be an ordinary young woman in wartime London - no stockings, no chocolate, no men - it can hardly be bettered. How did it, I wonder, evade fresh new soft covers for so long? -- Rachel Cooke * Observer *
A wartime masterpiece * Evening Standard *
Stella Gibbons is the Jane Austen of the 20th century -- Lynne Truss
Gibbons was an acute and witty observer, and her dissection of the British class system is spot-on * Mail on Sunday *
You show up a group of characters, all of whom are discontented and unhappy. Yet the feeling that comes through very powerfully is that life is wonderful, in spite of individual bitterness and frustration. -- Fan letter * Letter to Stella Gibbons from Henry Parris *

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