After reading Juliet Nicolson's absorbing account of Edwardian England in The Perfect Summer I was intrigued to learn from the introduction that she was inspired by L P Hartley's classic summer novel The Go-Between. I thought it might be difficult to find a copy, but this 1968 edition with its pretty cover was available in my local Oxfam shop. This is a wonderful coming of age story set in Norfolk at the turn of the century during an exceptionally hot English summer. Perhaps best to save this one for a weekend when you don't have a lot on as you will be hooked after reading its famous opening line:The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.
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The Go-Between was one of my A-level texts and I loved it then and still do now. I re-read it every couple of years or so, always in summer, and usually "in the grate heat" (I live in Australia) for sympathetic background.
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