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  Home Life Relayed - BBC presents...

  E M Delafield

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  Edmée Elizabeth Monica Dashwood, née de la Pasture, and more commonly known as E M Delafield, was born in Steyning, Sussex on 9th June 1890.   
   
  Raised in the fading years of the Victorian era with its Empire and strict moral codes Delafield, not yet married at twenty-one, joined a French religious order, in Belgium, but soon decided that this was a totally wrong choice for her.   
   
  Her next challenge was her work during the horror of the First World War.  Delafield decided to take up a position as a nurse in a Voluntary Aid Detachment in Exeter.  It was whilst here that she managed to write her first novel, ‘Zella Sees Herself’.   
   
  With the end of the war new opportunities were sought and she now took up a position for the South-West Region of the Ministry of National Service in Bristol.  With it came enough time to write two more novels: ‘The War Workers’ (1918) and ‘The Pelicans’ (1918).   
   
  On 17th July 1919, she married Colonel Arthur Paul Dashwood, OBE, an engineer responsible for building the massive docks at Hong Kong Harbour.  The marriage produced two children; Lionel and Rosamund.  That same year her fourth novel, ‘Consequences’, was published.   
   
  The couple spent their early years in Malaya but returned to England to live in Croyle, an old house in Kentisbeare, Devon.  Delafield continued to collect responsibilities and organise whatever she could.  At the initial meeting of the Kentisbeare Women's Institute, Delafield was unanimously elected president, and also became a Justice of the Peace, raised the children and, of course, continued to write her best-selling novels.   
   
  Her greatest work is undoubtedly the largely autobiographical ‘Diary of a Provincial Lady’, which is a simply structured journal of the life of an upper-middle class Englishwoman, living mostly in a Devon village of the 1930s.  It spawned several best-selling sequels.  Her works also includes stage and radio plays, film scripts and short stories.  
   
  After the death of her son in 1940, her health began to markedly decline.    
   
  E M Delafield died on 2nd December 1943 after collapsing whilst giving a lecture in Oxford.  She was 53.

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  The Thorn in the Flesh

  D H Lawrence

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  ‘The Thorn in the Flesh’ was written by D H Lawrence in 1914.  The story can be read in tandem with 'The Prussian Officer' which was written in the same year and has a similar setting and theme. In this story, the young soldier fights against his own shortcomings as a soldier and as a man. He flees the scene of his crime into the arms of his lover where he finds solace and comfort but he cannot escape the inevitable military machine that Lawrence hated.

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  Thirty Tiny Tales

  H. G. Wells, O. Henry, M. R. James

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  Thirty little gems by some of the world's great classic short story writers. 1.	The Flying Man by H. G. Wells2.	Between Rounds by O. Henry3.	A School Story by M. R. James4.	A Pair of Silk Stockings by Kate Chopin5.	A Deal in Ostriches by H. G. Wells6.	The Piano Next Door by Elia W. Peattie7.	Royal Visitors by E. F. Benson8.	The Stolen Bacillus by H. G. Wells9.	The Story of Chugoro by Lafcadio Hearn10.	One Law for the Rich by Stacy Aumonier11.	My Enemy and Myself by Vincent O'Sullivan12.	Philanthropy by John Galsworthy13.	Powers of the Air by J. D. Beresford14.	Escape, Three and Sixpence by Winifred Holtby15.	The Pearl of Love by H. G. Wells16.	The Adventure of the German Student by Nathaniel Hawthorne17.	A Vision of Judgment by H. G. Wells18.	A Haunted House by Virginia Woolf19.	The Black Dog by Stephen Crane20.	Treasure Trove by Neil MunroPlus ten more engaging classic short stories.

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  Gladys of Harlech

  L.M. Spooner

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  Gladys of Harlech was first published anonymously in 1858. The novel is set during the Wars of the Roses in the mid-15th century and tells the story of Gladys, granddaughter of the last Welsh keeper of Harlech, and her family.
  
  Fighting on the side of the House of Lancaster, Gladys and her family flee into hiding in the mountains after Harlech Castle falls into the hands of the Yorkists at the end of a long siege.
  
  Years later, the new tyrant steward of Harlech, Sir Gilbert Stacey, captures Gladys and presses her into serfdom, not knowing he has caught the heiress of the castle. During her arrest, Gladys falls in love with young Ethelred Conyers, but finds herself trapped between her sense of duty for her oppressed people and her affection for the young English nobleman.
  
  After escaping from Harlech , Gladys is sent on a quest to France by the Dewiness, a soothsaying witch. The Dewiness hopes the beautiful Welsh princess will lure Henry Tudor out of his French exile to free England and Wales from the clutches of King Richard III. Switching sides and joining the cause of the Red Rose, Ethelred follows Gladys on her dangerous journey.

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  War and Peace - Book 15: 1812-13...

  Leo Tolstoy

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  War and Peace is a literary work mixed with chapters on history and philosophy by the Russian author Leo Tolstoy. It was first published serially, then published in its entirety in 1869. It is regarded as one of Tolstoy's finest literary achievements and remains an internationally praised classic of world literature.Book 15: 1812-13: When seeing a dying animal a man feels a sense of horror: substance similar to his own is perishing before his eyes. But when it is a beloved and intimate human being that is dying, besides this horror at the extinction of life there is a severance, a spiritual wound, which like a physical wound is sometimes fatal and sometimes heals, but always aches and shrinks at any external irritating touch.

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  Rudyard Kipling The Collection

  Rudyard Kipling

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  This Audiobook contains the Collection of Rudyard Kipling:- The jungle book- Just So Stories- Kim- Captains Courageous- Mowgli: All of the Mowgli Stories from the Jungle Books- Puck of Pook's Hill - France At War On the Frontier of Civilization- Letters of Travel- A Fleet In Being- The Fringes Of The Fleet- American Notes

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