Vanessa

Fiction in glorious, sweeping measure, set against wild and beautiful scenery and crowded with fairs, balls, weddings, duels, witches, abductions, murder and romance. For those that haven't yet read Hugh Walpole there is a treat in store for you. Surely a welcome Christmas gift? - Keswick Reminder

Walpole's hamfisted, messy and eccentric attempt at the Great Lakeland Novel still deserves to be read. The episodes - by turns gracelessly ornate and bleakly brilliant - remain strangely enthralling and memorable, their self-indulgence a guilty pleasure for the reader too. In the Herries novels, Walpole confessed, he had allowed himself to be, for the first time in his adult life, "what I really am - a little boy telling stories in the dormitory". - Times Literary Supplement