Three middle-class sixth-form girls leave their independent boarding school in the summer of 1918, having been told by the headmistress that their marriage prospects have been weakened through military losses incurred during the Great War.
Land for a Lost Generation follows their progress over the next two decades. The first-person narrative is controlled by one of the girls, Vera, who takes an unexpected opportunity to marry a wounded army officer from a tenant-farming family shortly after the Armistice. Obliged to purchase their farm at the top of the market or risk losing it, the couple’s struggle through the ensuing agricultural depression provides a central focus for the novel.
The novel covers one of the most fascinating periods of British history, embracing political and socio-economic upheaval against a backdrop of technological advance, particularly in the countryside. Always overshadowing these developments in the wake of the Great Depression, however, is the fascist menace, which is leading inexorably towards another conflagration.
