Cedric is gone. No more tales from Herodotus. No more wicketkeeping wisdom.
‘Chips and gravy don’t match but you wolfed that down, didn’t you?’
‘Please don’t call me a Mata Hari.’
Boys will be boys. That’s what people say. One could go on to say that boys being boys on the world stage is what has got us into the mess we’re currently in. But that’s a discussion for another day...
London, 1942…
‘They have a choice, you know. You’d never think it from the way the worst ones carry on, but they have a choice.’
Elizabeth Fay thought she’d moved on from rotten old Rupert Rookwood – but when her MI5 boss suspects the indolent naval officer of passing secrets to the Nazis, Elizabeth is ordered to rekindle the romance and spy on him, plus the rest of the privileged, dysfunctional Rookwoods.
The operation thrusts Elizabeth from war-weary London to Rupert’s menacing ancestral home in Yorkshire, and on to the perilous shores of occupied Brittany – forcing her to decide how much of herself she’s willing to surrender in a war that has become dangerously personal.
You’re grieving, you’re falling in love and you’re skint. On top of it all, Europe’s going to Hell in a handcart. Things can’t get any worse, can they?
London, 1938…
William is grieving over his former teacher and mentor, killed fighting for the Republicans in Spain. As Europe slides towards war, he abandons his dream of a life in academia to support his family by working in a factory manufacturing Spitfire parts. And then he bumps into Elizabeth, an old school friend. It isn’t long before the pair are falling in love – but Elizabeth is no longer the girl he remembers.
Caught in a web of counter-espionage, street-fighting, family tension and conflicting desires, William investigates suspicious behaviour at the factory, unleashing tragic consequences that catapult him into the dangerous world of Franco’s Spain, where he must confront what it means to be civilised.