The Best of Intentions

Don't miss the wonderful new novel from the author of Good Taste and The Photographer of the Lost . . . Welcome to a utopia in the English countryside . . . When Robert Bardsley arrives at Greenfields in the spring of 1933, it is home to a collective of writers, artists, thinkers, musicians and horticulturalists; a place of unchecked idealism and outlandish lifestyles that regularly scandalises the county. An ambitious young gardener, Robert's been offered a cottage in the grounds of Anderby Hall in return for his efforts to restore the hornbeam maze and tame the feral roses. When the residents of Greenfields discover that Mrs Fitzgerald has sold the old orchard to a property developer, who intends to build an estate of mock-Tudor bungalows, cracks start to fracture the community's façade. Told by four members of the community over the course of a year, this is a novel about the tensions between ideals and practicalities. At what price do we let go of our principles? And, as the bungalows rise, can anything of the founding spirit of Greenfields survive?