検索キーワード： 制作 "Soundings" 歴史小説

In the backstreets of Liverpool, Eileen Watson lives with her mother Nellie, daughter Mel and her three tearaway sons. Life isn’t great, but they have each other, and family can get you through anything. Or can it? Then Britain declares war on Germany and their lives change forever. The children have to be evacuated, but Mel refuses to go, and so Eileen says goodbye to her mother and sons, moves away from the street they love and faces a future without her precious family.

Thea Osborne hopes to spend a quiet Christmas house sitting for the Shepherds in the picturesque village of Stanton. Walks in the local countryside with the dogs and perhaps a meal in the pub are all the excitement she wants. When her arrival at the village coincides with the funeral of local businessman Douglas Callendar, found electrocuted in his bath, Thea's interest is stirred but the onset of flu looks to prevent any sleuthing.

Cornwall, 1861. Beth Jago appears to have the idyllic life, she has a trade to earn a living and a cottage of her own in Cornwall’s beautiful River Valley. Yet appearances can be deceptive...Beth has been receiving threats, so when she finds a man in her home she acts on her instincts. One frying pan to the head and she has robbed the handsome stranger of his memory and almost killed him. Fearful he may die, she reluctantly nurses the intruder back to health. Yet can she trust the man with no name who has entered her life, or is he as dangerous as his nightmares suggest?

Val Neyler, driving an ambulance through the blazing heart of London, is in an impossible position, for the man she loves is a fighter pilot with the Luftwaffe. And Jenny, whose husband, Simon, is flying Spitfires, finds herself working as a landgirl on a Devon farm. Cara, by contrast, develops her social life, and Maude, in the WAAF, falls in love with two men at once.... And Tina, matriarch of the family, loves them all, scolds them all, and tries to understand the new generation growing up in the troubled times of war.

County Armagh, 1845. Married to the local blacksmith, young Sarah Hamilton spends her days looking after John and his apprentices at the forge, and her happiness is strengthened by the steady love of her husband and the beautiful green landscape of her home on Drumilly Hill. But when tragedy strikes, her life is changed forever. As the crops across Ireland begin to fail and the textile industry struggles to adapt to new methods, Sarah isn't the only one enduring hardships.

For Miss Cordell, principal of Persephone College, there are two great evils to be feared: unladylike behaviour among her students and bad publicity for the college. So her prim and cosy world is turned upside down when a secret society of undergraduates meets by the river on a gloomy January afternoon only to find the drowned body of the college bursar floating in her canoe.

Liverpool, 1938. It’s Christmas in the Courts, and single mother Rosheen Clarke and her mischievous twin daughters, April and May, have no idea of the cataclysmic events which will soon overtake them. When war is declared, April and May are evacuated to the countryside, and Rosheen joins the WAAF, where she befriends fellow Liverpudlian Cassie Valentine. While Rosheen worries about what trouble the twins will cause next, Cassie is fighting her love for her childhood friend, Andy.

Henriette d'Entragues isn't satisfied with simply being mistress of Henry IV of France, she wants a crown too. Despite his promises to marry her, the King is obliged by political necessity to ally himself with Marie de Medici, an Italian princess who will bring riches to the treasury. But Henriette isn't one for giving up easily. She has a written promise of marriage which she intends to use to declare the royal marriage illegal. All she has to do to achieve her ambition is to give Henry a son.

February, 1927: The remains of a man are found in the grounds of Maxtead Court, home of the wealthy Scroope family. Meanwhile, Margaret Rees-Talbot is preparing for her wedding to the Rev Symon Scroope - to the disapproval of some residents of Folbury, who think it's too soon after the death of her father, Osbert, found drowned in his bath a few months previously. Before he died, Osbert had been writing an account of his experiences as a soldier during the Second Boer War. But what really happened in South Africa back in 1902?

Isabella of Spain was a great woman, a great Queen. Crown of Aloes is presented as a personal chronicle. Within the framework of known fact and detail drawn from hitherto unexploited contemporary Spanish sources, a novelist’s imagination and understanding have provided motives, thoughts, and private conversations, helping to build up the fascinating character Isabella must have been. Her fortunes were varied indeed: she knew acute poverty, faced anxiety and danger with high courage, gave much, suffered much, lived to the full.

In 1906, Beth Jamieson is a little girl of eight, with honey gold curls and the sweetest nature. Her father is Mistress Fairly's right-hand man and when Nick's wife dies, Sarah Fairly treats Beth as her own.

Plymouth, Devon, 1501. Luke Kendal, the long-awaited son of Elizabeth and John, grows up under the loving watch of his mother and stepfather, but soon he, too, must face his trials. Irresistibly drawn to the wild Isobel, he risks all in his secret rendezvous with her. Battling with himself, he maintains the romance is only temporary, but any easing of his conscience is shattered by the revelation that Isobel is with child. Luke Kendal must make a decision: desert Isobel and render his child a bastard or defile the family honour.

By the summer of 1916, there is still no end to the war in sight and in the Sussex village of Ashden, optimism has given way to stoicism. While George Lilley leaves the Rectory to join the Royal Flying Corps, each of his four sisters finds her own way of contributing to the war effort. Gradually coming to terms with her broken engagement, Caroline Lilley numbly continues with her agricultural work at home, until tragedy forces her into leaving Ashden.

March 1915. Caroline Lilley's fiancé, Reggie, is away at the front, and Caroline gives up her job and returns home at his request. Frustrated in her desire to help the war effort, she throws herself into saving the harvest by organising the village women - and runs up against Reggie's mother, the formidable Lady Hunney. Caroline's sister, Felicia, departs to become an ambulance driver on the Western Front, and Phoebe and George eagerly await their chance to leave the village.

Occupied France is a dangerous place for two teenagers, especially when they are the children of a French mother and a British father. Desperate to escape and get back to England they take refuge on a canal barge and find themselves immersed in the complex Operation Kingfisher. There are plenty of forces at work determined to scupper any plans to see Allied airmen safely back to England, and eyes are everywhere.

It's 1963. A new band called the Rolling Stones is beginning to make its mark, and the miniskirt is coming into fashion. For young Liverpudlian photographer Kate O'Donnell, it's an exciting time to be in the capital - especially as she's on secondment to an up-and-coming fashion photographer's studio. But there's a darker side to 1960s London, Kate discovers, when the naked, battered body of a teenage prostitute is found amongst the rubbish bins behind a Soho jazz club.

Connie Morgan works in the haberdashery department of a large Southampton store, and is in love with her married boss. But everything changes when she's swept off her feet by dashing young car mechanic Sam. Having fallen head over heels for Sam, Connie is anxious to end her adulterous affair with John Baker. But John isn't going to let her go that easily, and Connie knows that if Sam ever finds out about her relationship with a married man, he will end everything, dashing all her dreams.

While her mother is at home giving birth, 11-year-old Isa must look after her younger siblings, but when her little sister is killed in an accident on a train line she carries the guilt through the rest of her life. As Isa grows up, more tragedy strikes. Yet there is only so much Isa can endure over the years, and discovering her husband’s affair is the final straw. Believing she has failed as a sister, a daughter, a wife and a mother, she makes an irrevocable decision....

London, April 1912. The third Irish Home Rule Bill is passing through Parliament, and the situation is growing ever more tense. Closely involved in the negotiations, cabinet minister Edmund Latimer finds himself under growing pressure, which only intensifies when his seven-month-old niece, Lucy, is snatched away in her pram in Regent's Park. Could there be a connection between Lucy’s kidnapping and the Irish talks? With her husband under intolerable strain, Edmund's wife, Alice, makes it her business to find out.

South Africa, May 1879. Ensign Sebastian Early of the 24th Foot is warming to his role as the Provost-Marshal in the British army encampment at Landman’s Drift. When an unidentified corpse turns up in camp after a reported hunting accident and is hurriedly buried, Sebastian quickly discovers that the man, a lieutenant, was in fact killed in an illegal duel, which means that his death should be treated as manslaughter, or even murder.