There is Moon, an archaeologist and fellow veteran of the war, a point that gives him some understanding of Birkin’s mental condition; Alice Keach, the vicar’s beautiful young wife who seems somewhat out of place beside her husband at the vicarage; and the Ellerbecks, a kindly local family who befriend Birkin, providing him with homemade food to supplement his meagre supplies. It is generally agreed that A Month in the Country is Carr’s masterpiece, although it is a very short novel (E. His novel A Month in the Country won the Guardian Fiction Prize, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and made into a memorable film. Out of their physical meeting comes a deeper communion - with the landscape, with history - and a renewed belief in the future. When you can change husbands as easily as changing a lightbulb, how do you know whether the one you have now is the good-enough one, or the wrong one, or the best one?

With a screenplay by Simon Gray, the novel was made into a 1987 film, directed by Pat O'Connor and starring Colin Firth, Kenneth Branagh, Natasha Richardson and Patrick Malahide. Hermione Lee was president of Wolfson College, Oxford from 2008 to 2017 and founding director of the Oxford Centre for Life Writing. I was so in love with this book that I tried to get hold of a copy of the dvd, a film made in 1986 starring Colin Firth and Kenneth Branagh. For more details, please consult the latest information provided by Royal Mail's International Incident Bulletin.A sensitive portrayal of the healing process that took place in the aftermath of the First World War, J.

Now an old man, Birkin looks back on the idyllic summer of 1920, remembering a vanished place untouched by change, a precious moment he has carried with him through the disappointments of the years. Janet Maslin, writing in The New York Times praised O'Connor's direction, suggesting it lent the film "a strong sense of yearning, as well as a spiritual quality more apparent in the look of the film than in its dialogue. The jacket illustration shows Tintagel Parish Church in Cornwall, but the story is set in Yorkshire. Naturally, the project brings Birkin into contact with other residents in the village, many of whom are intrigued by his work.Yes, I’ve heard that all of his books are very different from one another – a little like Sylvia Townsend Warner in that respect. I am quite glad I never had to teach the novel, because I know how difficult it would have been to get Sixth Formers to understand that decision, although it is utterly in character. We can ask and ask but we can’t have again what once seemed ours forever—the way things looked, that church alone in the fields, a bed on a belfry floor, a remembered voice, the touch of a hand, a loved face.

In the war’s aftermath, Birkin’s life has collapsed, and he has been left with deep emotional wounds. We are experiencing delays with deliveries to many countries, but in most cases local services have now resumed. As he painstakingly removes several centuries' worth of paint and grime he becomes gradually less closed off and begins to make friends within the community, in particular with Moon, another war veteran, who is camped in the churchyard, ostensibly looking for a lost grave.

Rereading the novel for the umpteenth time, I was once again astonished at how much there is in such a short book. The narrator, Tom Birkin, reflects on a summer spent in the small Yorkshire village of Oxgodby in 1920.

Excerpts and links may be used, provided that the material is credited and referenced to JacquiWine’s Journal with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. One is a war survivor, living in a church, intent upon uncovering and restoring a historical wall-painting. He worked for a year as an unqualified teacher — one of the lowest of the low in English education — at The musical score is easier to get hold of Howard Blake: Violin Concerto "The Leeds"; A Month in the Country Suite; Sinfonietta and I can really recommend this beautiful violin suite for strings.Adapted into a 1987 film starring Colin Firth, Natasha Richardson and Kenneth Branagh, A Month in the Country traces the slow revival of the primeval rhythms of life so cruelly disorientated by the Great War. We can ask and ask but we can’t have again what once seemed ours for ever — the way things looked, that church alone in the fields, a bed on a belfry floor, a remembered voice, the touch of a hand, a loved face. As the summer draws to a close, Birkin completes his restoration, and his time in Oxgodby comes to an end. Slightly Foxed brings back forgotten voices through its Slightly Foxed and Plain Foxed Editions, a series of beautifully produced little pocket hardback reissues of classic memoirs, all of them absorbing and highly individual. Book and dustjacket both in near fine condition, with typical lightening to the spine of the jacket (see image).