Tag: Wessex in Fiction

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Wessex In Fiction: The Butterfly Lion

The Butterfly Lion is a 1996 novel for children by Michael Morpurgo, which won the Smarties Book Prize for that year. It tells the story of a South African boy named Bertie who finds an orphaned white lion cub, but is forced to give the lion to a circus and leave South Africa for a boarding school in Wiltshire.

The book then follows Bertie’s life into adulthood and his service in the First World War. WIth his nurse girlfriend, and later wife, Millie, he tracks down the lion to a farmhouse in France, where it is living with the former circus owner after the circus closed. They bring it back to England, and when it dies, they memorialise it by carving a white lion into a hillside in Wiltshire. Morpurgo says that this was inspired by a glimpse of the white horse at Westbury through a train window.

Like Morpurgo’s earlier The War Horse, The Butterfly Lion has been adapted into a stage play., which uses puppetry to bring the lion to life. The stage play toured the UK in 2013.

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Wessex in Fiction: Wolf Solent

Wolf Solent is a 1929 novel by John Cowper Powys (1872-1963), the first of his four Wessex novels, though he was living in New York City when he wrote it. It tells of the eponymous character, modelled on Powys himself, returning to his childhood home town of Ramsgard in Dorset, a fictionalised version of Sherborne, following a mental breakdown which had cost him his previous job as a history teacher in London. There, he takes up a job as a literary assistant to the squire of nearby Kings Barton, modelled on Bradford Abbas.The novel chronicles his inner turmoil as he comes to believe that the book he is working on is immoral, and the squire the embodiment of evil.

The novel was published to great critical acclaim. VS Pritchett, writing in The Spectator, called it “as beautiful and strange as an electric storm”. However, this strangeness has meant that Powys has always remained something of a cult author, and has never achieved the mainstream appeal of Thomas Hardy, whose Wessex novels provided the model for Powys’s.

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Wessex In Fiction: Lady In Waiting

Lady In Waiting is one of five novels for adults written by the renowned children’s historical author Rosemary Sutcliff. It tells the life story of Sir Walter Raleigh through the eyes of his wife, Bess Throckmorton, a lady in waiting to Queen Elizabeth I.

The novel, first published in 1957, spans the reigns of both Elizabeth I and King James VI and I. The latter is portrayed as a period of decline from the Elizabethan golden age. The title has a double meaning, referring both to Throckmorton’s official title and to her condition of constantly waiting for her husband to return, due to his long periods at sea.

The book is currently out of print, though second-hand copies are readily and cheaply available from the usual outlets.

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Wessex in Fiction: A Horseman Riding By

A Horseman Riding By is a trilogy of novels by RF Delderfield set in Devon in the period between the end of the Boer War in 1902 and the funeral of WInston Churchill in 1965. It is an elegy for a lost England, and was adapted for television by the BBC in 1978.

The first novel, Long Summer Day tells of the protagonist, Paul Craddock, buying an estate in South Devon following his retirement from military service, and intertwines Craddock’s family saga with the historical events of the period leading up to World War I.

It is followed by Post of Honour, set in the inter-war period and ending with Craddock’s son Simon returning safely from Dunkirk.

Finally, The Green Gauntlet covers the rest of World War 2 and the post-war period. It ends with the death of Paul Craddock, symbolically happening shortly after that of Churchill.

The 1978 BBC adaptation by Alexander Baron, directed by Philip Dudley, starred Nigel Havers as Craddock. It was shown in 13 parts on Sunday evenings, but only adapted the first novel in the series. It has never been repeated, though it is available on DVD.

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Wessex in Fiction: The September Society

The September Society is the second in a series of novels by American author Charles Finch (b1980) featuring his Victorian detective Charles Lenox. In this story, the London-based but Oxford-educated Lenox returns to his alma mater, Lincoln College, to investigate the disappearance of a student. When the student is found garotted, Lenox suspects the involvement of a secretive student society, the September Society.

Finch keeps the twists and turns coming, and Lenox appears to be a popular character, having starred in a further 13 novels after this one. The latest, The Hidden City, is due out on the 7th of May.