Peculiar Ground

Peculiar Ground
Lucy Hughes-Hallett

‘One of the best novels of the year so far’ The TimesA SPECTATOR BOOK OF THE YEAR‘Unlike anything I’ve read. Haunting and huge, and funny and sensuous. It’s wonderful’ Tessa Hadley‘I just enjoyed it so very much’ Philip PullmanIt is the 17th century and a wall is being built around a great house. Wychwood is an enclosed world, its ornamental lakes and majestic avenues planned by Mr Norris, landscape-maker. A world where everyone has something to hide after decades of civil war, where dissidents shelter in the forest, lovers linger in secret gardens, and migrants, fleeing the plague, are turned away from the gate.Three centuries later, another wall goes up overnight, dividing Berlin, while at Wychwood, over one hot, languorous weekend, erotic entanglements are shadowed by news of historic change. A little girl, Nell, observes all.Nell grows up and Wychwood is invaded. There is a pop festival by the lake, a TV crew in the dining room and a Great Storm brewing. As the Berlin wall comes down, a fatwa signals a different ideological faultline and a refugee seeks safety in Wychwood.From the multi-award-winning author of The Pike comes a breathtakingly ambitious, beautiful and timely novel about game keepers and witches, agitators and aristocrats, about young love and the pathos of aging, and about how those who wall others out risk finding themselves walled in.

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Copyright (#udec14449-5df4-591d-8085-fde11b8d3813)

4th Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.4thEstate.co.uk (http://www.4thEstate.co.uk)

This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2017

Copyright 2017 © Lucy Hughes-Hallett

Lucy Hughes-Hallett asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

Cover images © plainpicture/Melanie Haberkorn

Cover design by Heike Schüssler

Map drawn by John Gilkes

‘Don’t Fence Me In’ (from Hollywood Canteen), words and music by Cole Porter © 1944 (Renewed) WB MUSIC CORPS. All rights reserved. Used by Permission of ALFRED MUSIC.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008126544

Ebook Edition © May 2017 ISBN: 9780008126537

Version: 2018-01-16

Dedication (#udec14449-5df4-591d-8085-fde11b8d3813)

For my brothers,

James and Thomas,

with love

Epigraph (#udec14449-5df4-591d-8085-fde11b8d3813)

We are a garden walled around,

Chosen and made peculiar ground;

A little spot enclosed by grace

Out of the world’s wide wilderness.

ISAAC WATTS

Contents

Cover (#u03789958-48c1-58eb-bdbe-e0bbf3a795e5)

Title Page (#ua417a75c-75b9-5d22-8250-e43498fd976d)

Copyright (#u62558696-1ab3-5c79-951b-b469eb571f7c)

Dedication (#ucc868b76-4f42-5b6c-85d7-ca0597d57ef0)

Epigraph (#u195c2b43-cdfb-55f1-8251-3f92cef91a65)

Dramatis Personae (#ua8c9b23f-0475-50b5-9dc6-5ad4b879b357)

Map (#u6e5c9ccd-1dca-5b95-840e-b02127e74ae7)

1663 (#u3f9629f2-1f32-5fb1-b85e-da8ca9344ecb)

1961 (#u8d6e2dcd-ab6f-5e23-91ef-b8e0ba47d57a)

Friday (#u557e10b0-bd2f-50d3-bfb2-8a51da28d36a)

Saturday (#ucf4856e2-a080-52b8-9651-12842748bd65)

Sunday (#litres_trial_promo)

1973 (#litres_trial_promo)

June (#litres_trial_promo)

July (#litres_trial_promo)

August (#litres_trial_promo)

1989 (#litres_trial_promo)

September (#litres_trial_promo)