The bad old days

Words can be all-powerful, as these three couples discovered. They reveal the romantic and unusual ways books brought them together…

IT had been a long, hard drive. Frances had left early, hoping to get away before the rush hour – only to discover that the rush hour started earlier still. She stopped for a break further south than

I’m forty-four, which is too old to be worrying about starting a new job,” Jessie declared, as if saying it aloud would make it true. Though she was trying not to show it, some of the gloss was being

THE clamour of seagulls woke Frances. For a moment, she was disorientated. Not so much in place – she knew this bedroom well – as in time. She had the odd feeling that none of the last 30-odd years ha

A hidden secret proved to Annie that bravery came in many forms

For almost 30 years, Valerie Finnis was a distinguished and charismatic teacher at the Waterperry Horticultural school for Women, near Oxford, founded in 1932 by the fearsomely smocked and gaitered Be