Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole, CBE (1884 – 1941) was an English novelist. He was the son of an Anglican clergyman, intended for a career in the church but drawn instead to writing. Among those who encouraged him were the authors Henry James and Arnold Bennett. His skill at scene-setting, vivid plots, and high profile as a lecturer brought him a large readership in the United Kingdom and North America. He was a best-selling author in the 1920s and 1930s, but has been largely neglected since his death...

With affectionate humor, Mr. Walpole tells the story of Jeremy and his two sisters, Helen and Mary Cole, who grow up in Polchester, a quiet English Cathedral town. There is the Jampot, who is the nurse ; Hamlet, the stray dog ; Uncle Samuel, who paints pictures and is altogether 'queer’; of course, Mr. and Mrs. Cole, and Aunt Amy. Mr. Walpole has given his narrative a rare double appeal, for it not only recreates for the adult the illusion of his own happiest youth, but it unfolds for the child-reader a genuine and moving experience with real people and pleasant things...

Toying with the distinctions between reader and narrator, author and character, imagination and perception, Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole's The Golden Scarecrow, in nine chapters, presents nine stories of nine children, united by location, more or less. A tenth story of a tenth life, divided into Prologue and Epilogue, provides a different sort of unity. These gentle and horrible tales of the weird may seem suitable for young readers, then again, they may not.

This is a literary biography of Joseph Conrad (1857 – 1924) who is regarded as one of the greatest novelists in English. He was granted British nationality in 1886, but always considered himself a Pole. Though he did not speak English fluently until he was in his twenties (and always with a marked accent), he was a master prose stylist who brought a distinctly non-English sensibility into English literature. He wrote stories and novels, many with a nautical setting, that depict trials of the human spirit...

Hamlet is Jeremy’s dog. This 1923 book is Hugh Walpole’s second volume in his Jeremy semi-autobiographical trilogy , Jeremy at Crale ), about a ten-year-old English boy. One commentator wrote this of the first book: “With affectionate humor, Mr. Walpole tells the story of Jeremy and his two sisters, Helen and Mary Cole, who grow up in Polchester, a quiet English Cathedral town…. Mr. Walpole has given his narrative a rare double appeal, for it not only recreates for the adult the illusion of his own happiest youth, but it unfolds for the child-reader a genuine and moving experience with real people and pleasant things...

The year is 1919 and peace has sprung upon the world after the unspeakable carnage of World War I. The place is Hortons, a building of expensive flats on Duke Street just off Piccadilly, London. Social structures are disintegrating, expectations are not being met, people are confused, life is different. Each story is about a person who lives or works at Hortons, all struggling to adjust to life as it has radically changed. Twelve short stories, published in 1921, by the early twentieth century very popular English writer, Hugh Walpole. - Summary by david wales

“Quite a number of years ago there was an old rickety building on the rock above Seatown in Polchester, and it was one of a number in an old grass-grown square known as Pontippy Square. In this house at one time or another lived three old ladies,… It was a windy, creaky, rain-bitten dwelling-place for three old ladies….” During the mid 1920s Walpole produced two of his best-known novels in the macabre vein that he drew on from time to time, exploring the fascination of fear and cruelty. The Old Ladies is a study of a timid elderly spinster exploited and eventually frightened to death by a predatory widow.

Is the father insane or merely sadistic, a man entombed in a spirit of malevolence? This 1925 novel by a perceptive observer explores the territory exceptionally.- Summary by david wales

The book is probably better known under the title ‘Mr Perrin and Mr Traill’, later made into a well-known film in 1948. Perrin and Traill are masters at a grim old-fashioned second-rate boarding public school in Cornwall – Perrin has been there many years and the youthful Traill has just arrived. The book concerns the growing antagonism between the two which turns into active dislike following an unfortunate incident and which eventually has devastating consequences. The author vividly captures the dreadful nature of such a cloistered society and the stultifying effect it has on the pupils, their teachers and the other adults in the community. - Summary by Simon Evers

Hjalmar Johanson is a boyish unworldly Swedish body builder come to Walpole’s fictional cathedral town of Polchester. His name is “simplified” by the townsfolk to Harmer John. He is attracted to Polchester by the cathedral. He has a vision of transforming the town and its populace to a healthier and more beautiful state. He establishes a business, essentially a gymnasium, to help people become healthier. He envisions tearing down the slums along the river and rebuilding the area with more attractive and publicly healthier buildings...

Three generations of the Trenchard family, ruled over by the indomitable Mrs Trenchard, live together in comfortable domesticity until Katherine, the favourite daughter, meets and falls in love with Philip, back from some years in Russia, who threatens the whole stability of the family set up by thinking that he can marry her and thus take her away from them all. Philip and Katherine agree reluctantly to postpone their marriage for a full year. During this year, the family begins to splinter as more about Philip and his past becomes known. With considerable humour, the book follows the ups and downs of the family relationships as the year progresses.

Eleven short stories from The Windsor Magazine in the 1920s, Best British Short Stories of 1922, and Best British Short Stories of 1923. - Summary by David Wales