To his parents\" dismay, Colin Keith - out of the noble but misplaced sense of duty peculiar to high-minded young university graduates - chooses to quit his training for the Bar and take a teaching job at Southbridge School....

It\"s August in the Barsetshire village of Worsted, and Richard Tebben, just down from Oxford, is contemplating the gloomy prospect of a long summer in the parental home....

It is wartime in Barsetshire, and so much has changed. Belier\"s Priory is now a hospital for wounded soldiers, and Sir Harry and Lady Waring have moved to the servants\" quarters, where they make the best of it - so much more practical than the large, draughty house!...

It is 1945. When peace breaks out at last, familiar wartime routines are interrupted, and the residents of Barsetshire seem as disconcerted as they are overjoyed. As the country\"s eligible young men return home, life regains momentum: before long, everyone is spinning in a flurry of misunderstandings and engagements....

It is summer 1939 and the social event of the year is about to take place: Rose Birkett, a flighty beauty with a penchant for breaking engagements and hearts, is finally getting married, and the whole village - especially her parents - breathes a sigh of relief. By autumn, however, summer weddings seem a distant memory as war reaches Barsetshire....

Barsetshire in the war years. Miss Bunting, governess of choice to generations of Barsetshire aristocracy, has been coaxed out of retirement by Sir Robert and Lady Fielding to tutor their daughter Anne, delicate, sixteen years old, and totally lacking in confidence....

Barsetshire in the latter years of the Second World War is a peaceful and gossipy place, but there has been one lively change. A girls\" school, evacuated from London, has taken over Harefield Park. Miss Sparling seems to be the perfect headmistress: she dresses as a headmistress should and is an easy and erudite conversationalist....

Mr Marling, of Marling Hall, has begun to accept - albeit reluctantly - that he will probably never be able to pass his wonderful old estate on to his children. The Second World War is bringing an end to so many things, but the Marlings carry on as best they can in the face of rationing and a shortage of domestic help....

As the war continues it brings its own set of trials to the the village of Northbridge. Eight officers of the Barsetshire Regiment have been billeted at the rectory, and Mrs Villars, the Rector\"s wife, is finding the attentions of Lieutenant Holden (who doesn\"t seem to mind that she is married to his host) quite exhausting....

Jack Middleton likes to imagine himself a country squire. At weekends he retires to Laverings Estate with his wife, Catherine. He may be pompous, and they may seem ill-matched, but the couple are devoted to each other....

The first of Angela Thirkell\"s brilliantly satirical English comedies set in the fictional county of Barsetshire, High Rising is now available as a Virago Modern Classic. Successful lady novelist Laura Morland and her boisterous young son Tony set off to spend Christmas at her country home in the sleepy surrounds of High Rising....

A delightfully appealing 1930s comedy from Angela Thirkell\"s classic Barsetshire series: the Brandons cheerfully confront matters of love, money and an ill-tempered dowager aunt. Lavinia Brandon is quite the loveliest widow in Barsetshire, blessed with beauty and grace, as well as two handsome grown-up children, Delia and Francis....

Alice Barton finds adventure during a Friday-to-Monday at a grand country house in Angela Thirkell\"s classic, deliciously diverting 1930s romantic comedy....

Pretty, impecunious Mary Preston, newly arrived as a guest of her Aunt Agnes at the magnificent wooded estate of Rushwater, falls head over heels for handsome playboy David Leslie. Meanwhile, Agnes and her mother, the eccentric matriarch Lady Emily, have hopes of a different, more suitable match for Mary....