The Taverner's Place - Couverture souple

Caroline Harvey is the pseudonym of Joanna Trollope, the highly acclaimed author of bestselling contemporary novels. The Choir, A Village Affair, A Passionate Man, The Rector's Wife, The Men and the Girls, A Spanish Lover, The Best of Friends, Next of Kin, Other People's Children, Marrying the Mistress, Girl from the South and Second Honeymoon are all published by Black Swan. She has also written a study of women in the British Empire, Britannia's Daughters. As Caroline Harvey she has written several historical novels including Legacy of Love, A Second Legacy, Parson Harding's Daughter, The Steps of the Sun, Leaves from the Valley, The Brass Dolphin, and City of Gems which are all published by Corgi Books.

Joanna Trollope was born in Gloucestershire, where she still lives. She was appointed OBE in the 1996 Queen's Birthday Honours List for services to literature.

The Taverners had lived at Buscombe, the mellow stone manor house in Wiltshire, for generations. They had farmed the land and sent their sons to war (and even, latterly, to commerce) in a way of life that seemed timeless. But in 1870 a new generation is about to take control - Tom Taverner, dedicated, impulsive, deeply caring about his inheritance, and his sister Catherine, intelligent, humorous, but frustrated by the limited opportunities open to women in a man's world. Tom marries, and agricultural depression hits the estate. And suddenly it seems that everything which was so secure can no longer hold.

Stretching in time from the 1870s to the outbreak of the second world war, and in distance from Crete to East Africa, this warmly satisfying novel is a triumph of storytelling.