L.P. Hartley's moving exploration of a young boy's loss of innocence The Go-Between is edited with an introduction and notes by Douglas Brooks-Davies in Penguin Modern Classics. 'The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there' When one long, hot summer, young Leo is staying with a school-friend at Brandham Hall, he begins to act as a messenger between Ted, the farmer, and Marian, the beautiful young woman up at the hall. He becomes drawn deeper and deeper into their dangerous game of deceit and desire, until his role brings him to a shocking and premature revelation. The haunting story of a young boy's awakening into the secrets of the adult world, The Go-Between is also an unforgettable evocation of the boundaries of Edwardian society. Leslie Poles Hartley (1895-1972) was born in Whittlesey, Cambridgeshire, and educated at Harrow and Balliol College, Oxford. For more than thirty years from 1923 he was an indefatigable fiction reviewer for periodicals including the Spectator and Saturday Review. His first book, Night Fears (1924) was a collection of short stories; but it was not until the publication of Eustace and Hilda (1947), which won the James Tait Black prize, that Hartley gained widespread recognition as an author. His other novels include The Go-Between (1953), which was adapted into an internationally-successful film starring Julie Christie and Alan Bates, and The Hireling (1957), the film version of which won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. If you enjoyed The Go-Between, you might like Barry Hines's A Kestrel for a Knave, also available in Penguin Modern Classics. 'Magical and disturbing' Independent 'On a first reading, it is a beautifully wrought description of a small boy's loss of innocence long ago. But, visited a second time, the knowledge of approaching, unavoidable tragedy makes it far more poignant and painful' Express

Leo Colston - a man haunted by the events of his past - vividly recalls his unwitting role acting as a go-between for the beautiful upper-class Marian and the tenant-farmer Ted. Their illicit love affair drags young Leo into an adult world of passion and intrigue. This haunting, ambitious musical by Richard Taylor and David Wood is a deeply moving coming-of-age story, exploring the shadows the past can cast on the present. Based on the classic novel by L.P. Hartley, the West End production of this award-winning musical starred Michael Crawford.

'A masterpiece' Anita Brookner 'A very beautiful novel' Nick Hornby 'Includes some of the most perfect sentences in English' Guardian At the turn of the twentieth century, two children play on an English beach. Eustace, a gentle, dreamy, boy with a weak heart, relies on his older sister Hilda. As young adults, Eustace and Hilda are unexpectedly invited to stay at the grand country house of the wealthy Staveley family. The weekend's events will haunt the siblings' lives as their story travels from Oxford colleges to Venetian palazzi. The magnum opus from the author of The Go-Between, this is an enchanting, tender exploration of two siblings who cannot live together or apart. With an introduction by Anita Brookner

Timothy Casson, a bachelor writer, is forced to return from a contented life in Venice to an English village. Taking a house by the river where he can pursue his passion for rowing, he has to do battle with the locals to overcome his isolation and feelings of incompleteness. This most complex of Hartley's novels examines the multiple layers of Casson's relationships with servants, local society and friends.

Overcome with grief at her husband's death, Lady Franklin, an eligible young widow, unburdens herself to Leadbitter - a gallant, hard-bitten ex-soldier who has invested his savings in the car he drives for hire - as he takes her on a series of journeys. He in turn beguiles her with stories of his non-existent wife and children, drawing her out of her self-absorption and weaving a dream-life with Lady Franklin at its heart. Half-hoping to make his dream come true, Leadbitter takes a bold, not to say reckless, step which costs him dearly, and brings these characters' tangled story to a dramatic and unexpected conclusion.

A lonely boy living on his uncle's farm in the Lincolnshire Fens, Richard Mardick's solitary existence is interrupted by a chance meeting, and idyllic love affair, with Lucy. A disused brickfield is the scene of their clandestine meetings, and it is there that Richard finds her drowned in a muddy pool. Forced by circumstances to look back on these days, Richard finds himself recounting this episode to his secretary. Its shattering significance throughout the rest of his life is put into remarkable perspective by the unusual framework with which Hartley has enclosed his story. Weaving skilfully through past events while staying awake to the present, The Brickfield is a masterly evocation of childhood and its influences on the adult mind.

The three books gathered together as "Eustace and Hilda" explore a brother and sister's lifelong relationship. Hilda, the older child, is both self-sacrificing and domineering, as puritanical as she is gorgeous; Eustace is a gentle, dreamy, pleasure-loving boy: the two siblings could hardly be more different, but they are also deeply devoted. And yet as Eustace and Hilda grow up and seek to go their separate ways in a world of power and position, money and love, their relationship is marked by increasing pain.
L. P. Hartley's much-loved novel, the magnum opus of one of twentieth-century England's best writers, is a complex and spellbinding work: a comedy of upper-class manners; a study in the subtlest nuances of feeling; a poignant reckoning with the ironies of character and fate. Above all, it is about two people who cannot live together or apart, about the ties that bind--and break.

A present contains a monstrous secret. An uninvited guest haunts a Christmas party. A shadow slips across the floor by firelight. A festive entertainment ends in darkness and screams. Who knows what haunts the night at the dark point of the year? This collection of seasonal chillers looks beneath Christmas cheer to a world of ghosts and horrors, mixing terrifying modern fiction with classic stories by masters of the macabre. From Neil Gaiman and M. R. James to Muriel Spark and E. Nesbit, there are stories here to make the hardiest soul quail - so find a comfy chair, lock the door, ignore the cold breath on your neck and get ready to welcome in the real spirits of Christmas.

A collection of four classic films starring Julie Christie. In 'Billy Liar' (1963), undertaker's clerk Billy (Tom Courtenay) escapes his dreary small town existence in a 1950s Northern town by living in a fantasy world where he realises his ambitions. When his job, unsympathetic working class family and two fiancees threaten to become too much, he meets the fashionable Liz (Christie), who offers him his one chance for real escape. Christie won an Oscar for her role in 'Darling' (1965). In the film she plays Diana Scott, an ambitious model determined to make it to the top. Using her sexuality, she manipulates powerful men, but in so doing becomes a prisoner of the jet-setting lifestyle she once yearned for. Dirk Bogarde co-stars as Diana's long-suffering boyfriend. 'Far From The Madding Crowd' (1967) is an adaptation of Thomas Hardy's 19th-century story of a woman's passion. Bathsheba (Christie) is in love with three very different men who are also in love with her: her first love is a handsome and wayward soldier; the second is the local noble Lord, and the third is an ever-patient farmer. 'The Go-Between' (1970) is an adaptation of the classic novel by L.P. Hartley. A young teenage boy, Leo (Dominic Guard), is invited to a wealthy school friend's rich family estate and is drawn into a love affair between his friend's twenty-something sister, Marian (Christie), and the family neighbour, even though she is engaged to be married. She uses Leo as a go-between, sending messages to her lover. Despite feeling he is betraying her fiance Hugh (Edward Fox), Leo carries on being the messager boy and discovers more about the attraction between men and women along the way.

"A writer who deserves to be admired and cherished." - Francis King
" O]ne of the most original novelists of his generation. His delicate, witty prose ably evokes the atmosphere of south London in which the story is set." - "British Book News"
" I]ntriguing . . . Short, firmly written, and agreeably unpretentious." - "The Guardian"
Francis Norton is an elderly bachelor who enjoys nothing better than spending a warm day outside in one of London's parks. When one afternoon he innocently overhears the earnest conversation of two young lovers, Edward and Mirrie, whose relationship is complicated by Edward's unhappy marriage to a drunken wife, Francis decides to interfere in an attempt to help the pair. But despite his good intentions, his matchmaking efforts have unexpected consequences, and he soon finds himself caught up in a complicated triangle involving blackmail, a mysterious death, and courtroom intrigue. Will Francis's well-meaning manipulations lead to a happy ending for his two young friends, or will his meddling end in tragedy and disaster?
Found among C.H.B. Kitchin's papers after his death, "A Short Walk in Williams Park" was published posthumously in 1971. As L.P. Hartley writes in his Foreword, this short novel has the same distinction of style as Kitchin's other acclaimed works and displays many of its author's finest qualities. Republished here for the first time, Kitchin's final book joins his "Ten Pollitt Place" (1957) and "The Book of Life" (1960), both also recently reprinted by Valancourt.

An evocative account of a childhood summer spent beside the sea in Norfolk by brother and sister, Eustace and Hilda.

'You'll never be happy until you can think and feel and look like other people . . .' Jael 97 is an Alpha. Deemed over-privileged for her beauty, she is compelled to report to the Ministry of Facial Justice, where her face will be reconstructed. For Jael lives in the New State, created out of the devastation of the Third World War. Under the rule of the Darling Dictator, citizens must wear sackcloth and ashes, and only a 17.5% quotum of personality is permitted to each. Anything that inspires envy is forbidden. But Jael cannot suppress her rebellious spirit. Secretly, she starts to reassert the rights of the individual, and decides to hunt down the faceless Dictator. 'An exquisitely entertaining fantasy' Observer