The Flint Anchor

FROM THE FRONT, INSIDE “ ‘A man who meant no harm, who had done his best for his family, who had been faithful to his wife, and obedient to his God, and loyal to his country, and a model of commercial integrity, and who had spread around him a desert of mendacity and discomfort.’ Such is John Barnard, the central figure of Sylvia Townsend Warner’s new novel — a paternal employers, a disastrous family man, with too exacting a conscience, too impulsive a heart, a prey to misgivings, yet refusing to be dislodged from an idolatrous attachment to his daughter whose stupidity hardens into heartlessness under the pressure of his doting We follow his career, and the fortunes of his numerous family, in the East Anglian sea-coast town of Loseby from 1810 to 1860. So deep is Miss Warner’s understanding, not only of her characters but of the age they lived in, that we seem at times to be reading memoirs rather than fiction.” 288 pages. 1954 edition.