Alvesdon
August 1939, and once more Britain is on the brink of a terrible global conflict. The Castells are a long-established landed farming family in rural Wiltshire. In a timespan of just over a year, Holland covers the family’s immersion in the war, both as combatants and local rural farmers and workers.
A good proportion of the novel is devoted to those days of August when the country was sliding into conflict, and the dismay and trepidation that this caused in the breast of the Castells and their circle of neighbours and employees. Although the subject of the approach of the Second World War in England is one that has been covered comprehensively in fiction, this specific emphasis on the impact upon a secluded rural community is well portrayed and engaging. All the uncertainty, regret and fear amongst the landowners, farmers and the rural population is described with feeling and authenticity.
The writing is fluid, and the narrative progresses capably and effectively. As one would expect from a professional historian, the factual context is excellent, but the reader does not feel that they are receiving a history lesson or lecture for most of the time. The large cast of family characters introduced in the opening chapters of the book took quite a while to get familiar with, and although there is a dramatis personae at the beginning of the novel, reading it via a digital copy makes it quite difficult to refer to the list and establish just who is who and what their respective familial relations are. The story ends rather abruptly in October 1940, and it would seem that a sequel to the affairs of the Castell family is very much in order.
