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Start giftingAbdication
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Learn moreEngland, 1936. The year began with the death of a beloved king and the ascension of a charismatic young monarch, sympathetic to the needs of the working class, glamorous, and single. By year's end, the world would be stunned as it witnessed that new leader give up his throne in the name of love, just as the unrest and violence that would result in a second World War were becoming impossible to ignore. In pitch-perfect prose, Juliet Nicolson has captured an era in which duty and pleasure, tradition and novelty, and order and chaos all battled for supremacy in the hearts and minds of king and commoner alike. As addictive as Downton Abbey, Abdication is a breathtaking story inspired by a love affair that shook the world.
Juliet Nicolson is the author of two works of history, The Great Silence: 1918–1920 Living in the Shadow of the Great War and The Perfect Summer: Dancing into Shadow in 1911, and a novel, Abdication. As the grand-daughter of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson and the daughter of Nigel Nicolson she is part of a renowned and much scrutinized family and the latest in the family line of record-keepers of the past. She lives with her husband in East Sussex, not far from Sissinghurst, where she spent her childhood. She has two daughters, Clemmie and Flora, and one grand-daughter, Imogen.
Carole Boyd’s theater work includes a year performing with Alan Ayckbourn’s Scarborough Company where she created the role of June in Way Upstream, while her television credits include Hetty Wainthropp Investigates and Mystery!: Campion. Boyd also plays the notorious Lynda Snell in The Archers, is a regular reader on BBC Radio 4’s Poetry Please, and has won three audiobook awards for her recordings.
Reviews
“I was completely gripped by the story of David and Wallis Simpson…But no less compellingly drawn were the rest of Juliet Nicolson’s cast of characters…I’m in awe of Juliet’s ability to move from nonficition to fiction so seamlessly.”
“Anyone interested in the 1930s will revel in this richly detailed slant on the abdication crisis.”“Nicolson’s eye for period detail is spot-on, and her characterizations of the main players are superb…This is a delightful story of a friendship forged by the drama of the abdication and the approaching war; ideal for the intelligent deckchair.”
“Absorbing…As the abdication crisis deepens and Britain is thrust ever closer to the perils of war, the lives of Nicolson’s characters undergo significant changes, all rendered by her keen comprehension of human nature.”
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