G Mw Wemyss

Cross and Poppy: a Village Tale (Village Tales) G Mw Wemyss

Trollopean clerics, comic peers with hidden depths, the villagers of a thousand cosy English novels ? but in a very modern world: our own. The Woolfonts are the prettiest and most placid villages in England. There?s a Free School; a real-ale pub; a district XI that sweeps all before it; three splendid old churches; and the duke of Taunton presiding in a kindly way over it all ? and he?s not, actually, the light comedy turn he chooses to pretend to be. There?s a celebrated restaurant, as well, run by the celebrated ?Hipster Chef?, and he?s not the only village celebrity: there?s also his same-sex partner, a former Man City striker; and a former England cricketer; and a pretty Hon. ? no rebel, she ? who runs the Woolbury Stud; and there?s Sher Mirza, English and Music master at the Free School: a devastatingly handsome British Pakistani who?s an acknowledged and expert scholar of English choral and church music ? and a devout Muslim. There?s nothing wanting in the Woolfonts save a new Rector. They get him, a young, absurdly attractive Anglo-Catholic priest and recent widower from the Midlands, Fr Noel Paddick. The villagers and gentry also get a spate of death, bigotry, persecution, fire, storms, and attempted murder. And they certainly didn?t anticipate an unlikely love triangle, or that a bittersweet attachment ? bringing both pain and grace to the new Rector and the English master alike ? should play out, before the sympathetic villagers, between the Summer fête and the crosses and poppies of Remembrance Sunday.