Charlotte Bingham Livres

The sequel to To Hear a Nightingale. This is a love story about the first woman to train a Derby winner and the unexpected problems which accompany her new-found fame and fortune.

Further adventures in the lives of the characters met in Volume 1, LOVE IN BELGRAVIA ~ dreary little Jennifer, now a seemingly the permanently pregnant marchiones, beautiful but vexatious Georgiana who while recovering from her affair with a world famous film director now pretends to have a husband so that Gus her new and working class artist lover won't insist on marrying her, louche and drunken Andrew Gillott now miserably married to Jennifer's dreadful social aspring mother Clarissa, and pretty Patti, ex-Bluebell Girl who calls in Fulton and Elliott, the happily married gay interior decorators to swathe her new husband's knightly stately home in orange satin - characters wonderful and ghastly at the same time, and tgruly British from the bottom of their green wellies to the top of the Hermes headscarves.

The deliciously funny confessions of a debutante which became an international bestseller It is the early 1960s, and eighteen-year-old Charlotte Bingham, fresh from convent school, has been catapulted into the horrors of The Season. Though desperately on the hunt for a Superman to call her own, the country house ball circuit seems to yield nothing but an inexhaustible crop of charmless, chinless Weeds. But Charlotte's adventures are more than sufficiently diverting: whether she's bouffing up her hair to try and pass herself off as a beatnik, hurtling down the Champs Elysées on the back of a Vespa, or accidentally sticking her eyelids together with eyelash glue while at modelling school, her experiments in coming-of-age are never short of intrigue – and disaster. Published in 1963 when she was just nineteen, Bingham's sparkling memoir of her trials and travails became an international bestseller. From its pages emerges a deeply lovable and relentlessly optimistic young woman – for all that her shorthand isn't what it might be – looking for love in all the wrong places.

Keston Hall, Buckinghamshire, is the seat of the Lydiard family and the imposing setting for a compelling love story that begins in 1907. Beautiful and spirited, Grace Merrill seems to stand with the world at her feet. But then, quite unexpectedly, a family tragedy obliges Grace to abandon her artistic talents and enter a life in service at the Hall. In this Upstairs Downstairs world of sadistic housekeepers and drunken butlers there is genuine hardship and drudgery for those employed in servicing the few. But Grace soon discovers that she has another talent when, through the merest chance, she manages to escape from the kitchen to the nursery floor. Here she learns to love Lady Lydiard's children as her own. Here, too, she learns her first lesson as a woman, that passion and sacrifice make awkward bedfellows. But if the love of her life, Brake Merrowby, brings her more sorrow than joy, her love for the children more than compensates for her enforced isolation in their world of muffins and rocking horses. As change reaches out to touch the great house, the realities of war leave their mark on the family. Yet for the children, grown and growing, when they stop to look back at the top-floor window they see only their nanny. Almost as if part of the fabric of the building, Grace grows to become not just the touchstone of their lives but in essence the mistress of the house itself.

London in the 1950s. Lottie is a reluctant typist at MI5 and the even more reluctant daughter of the organisation's most illustrious spy. Now she has had the bad luck to fall in love with Harry, a handsome if frustrated young actor, who has also been press-ganged into the family business, acting as one of her father's undercover agents in the Communist hotbed of British theatre. Together the two young lovers embark on a star-studded adventure through the glittering world of theatre - but, between missing files, disapproving parents, and their own burgeoning creative endeavours, life is about to become very complicated indeed...

Florence Fontaine has still not recovered from a family tragedy when she discovers a strangely dressed young man asleep in her guest cottage at the Old Rectory. Against her better judgement she offers him breakfast, only to rue the day as she finds herself caught up in the resulting drama of his life. Florence's young and beautiful daughter, Amadea, is immediately suspicious of Edmund, as he appears to be called, fearing that he might be a fraud. Against everyone's advice, Florence enlists friends and neighbours to help restore Edmund's now wandering mind and discover who he might be. As the mystery unfolds, it becomes apparent that Edmund's history is entwined with that of nearby Harlington Hall, but that his real identity is something quite other. Florence and Amadea become united in their quest, an adventure that takes them into many pasts, not least that of the young man whom they are now dedicated to help. In doing so they are finally able to put the tragedies of the past behind them, repair their once disjointed lives, and embrace a new and happy future.

By the author of To Hear a Nightingale, The Business describes the showbusiness careers of two people from very different backgrounds, Meredith Browne and Max Kassov. This is a tale of romance, of money and corruption, of talent used and abused.

In this compelling tale, the recently widowed Helena is encouraged by her eccentric friend Millie to buy a share in a horse. Suddenly, both women find themselves involved not just in the fate of the little horse, but of Rory James, his trainer.

"Daughters of Eden" focuses on the lives and fortunes of four very different young women, Marjorie, Poppy, Kate and Lily, at the outbreak of the Second World War

A century ago, marriage, and marriage alone, offered a nicely brought-up girl escape from the domination of her parents. Indeed it was the only path to freedom. That path led her to a Season in London and, the ultimate goal, Coming Out as a debutante. But along the way she had to survive a terrifying few months, a make-or-break time in which her family's hopes for her could only be fulfilled through a proposal of marriage. For Lady Emily Persse, Coming Out means leaving her beloved Ireland and its informalities for England and its stricter codes. For Portia Tradescant, released from the boredom of life in the English countryside, it means trying to get through the Season despite the best efforts of her eccentric Aunt Tattie. For beautiful May Danby, the Season is an entrée to a whole other life, worlds away from her strict convent upbringing in Yorkshire. Debutantes, Charlotte Bingham's delightful and stylish new saga, centres around a single London Season in the 1890s. But it is not just about the debutantes themselves. It is as much about the women who launch them, and the Society which supports their way of life. It is also about the battle for power, privilege and money, fought, not in the male tradition upon the battlefield, but in the female tradition...in the ballroom.