Upon meeting Beatrice at the train station, Hugh muses that his Aunt Agatha, one of the town’s leading matrons, would have preferred that Beatrice were much plainer. The female characters, most notably newcomer to town Beatrice Nash, hired by the more progressive elements of the local school board to teach schoolboys Latin, prod the male characters forward not toward war (though that looms over the novel), but toward adulthood and reckoning.īeatrice is too young, attractive, and intelligent (she even has literary aspirations) for some to believe her a proper teacher. As Hugh reflects on his childhood in the opening pages: “Small boys, he now knew, were inveterate fraudsters and begged, pleaded, and cajoled for added rights and treats with innocent eyes and black hearts.” This is a story of English boys becoming men, most notably the brilliant medical student Hugh Grange and his artistic cousin Daniel Bookham, and the women who nudge them on. This sophomore novel from the author of the bestselling Major Pettigrew’s Last Standbrings us back to the moment before the world changed forever - before the onset of the First World War in 1914 - in the country town of Rye near the high Sussex bluffs.

Soon the limits of progress, and the old ways, will be tested as this small Sussex town and its inhabitants go to war.If you’re mourning the end of “Downton Abbey” as I am, it’s time for the witty and wise The Summer Before the War by Helen Simonson. For despite Agatha's reassurances, the unimaginable is coming. But just as Beatrice comes alive to the beauty of the Sussex landscape and the colorful characters who populate Rye, the perfect summer is about to end. For her part, mourning the death of her beloved father, who has left her penniless, Beatrice simply wants to be left alone to pursue her teaching and writing. When Beatrice Nash arrives with one trunk and several large crates of books, it is clear she is significantly more freethinking - and attractive - than anyone believes a Latin teacher should be.

And Agatha has more immediate concerns she has just risked her carefully built reputation by pushing for the appointment of a woman to replace the Latin master.

Agatha's husband works in the Foreign Office, and she is certain he will ensure that the recent saber rattling over the Balkans won't come to anything. Hugh Grange, down from his medical studies, is visiting his Aunt Agatha, who lives with her husband in the small, idyllic coastal town of Rye. It is the end of England's brief Edwardian summer, and everyone agrees that the weather has never been so beautiful.

The summer before the war