The Walpole Chronicles

Hugh Walpole contributed to a series of short booklets published in 1928, edited by Dr. Percy Dearmer, of King’s College, London, in which Hugh Walpole writes a deeply intimate autobiographical insight into his his thoughts and feelings towards spirituality and how his faith was formed.

This 1927 work is the third and final in Walpole’s Jeremy series.  Jeremy’s home is in Polchester, a fictional English cathedral town in Walpole’s imagination. In this book Jeremy goes to boarding school.

A story of young woman’s alienation from the society which holds one captive, whose life is suddenly disrupted, by a stumbling progression through constrained social cliques and frustrated romantic attachments, haunted by religious shadows.

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

Three generations of the Trenchard family live together in comfortable domesticity until Katherine, the favourite daughter, meets and falls in love with Philip, back from some years in Russia, and the whole stability of the family is threatened.

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. Antagonism grows between the two turns into active dislike following an unfortunate incident which eventually has devastating consequences.

Rachel, a spirited young girl, has to choose between Francis Breton, her difficult cousin who has been disowned by the family, and Roddy Seddon, a conventional and rather boring but wealthy young man.

Hjalmar Johanson is a boyish unworldly Swedish body builder who comes to Walpole’s fictional cathedral town of Polchester. He has a vision of transforming the town and its populace to a healthier and more beautiful state.

The story of an arrogant 19th-century archdeacon in conflict with other clergy and laity was certain to bring comparisons with Trollope’s Barchester Towers (The Manchester Guardian ’s review was headed “Polchester Towers”), but unlike the earlier work, The Cathedral is wholly uncomic….

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.

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. 

Hamlet is Jeremy’s dog. This 1923 book is Hugh Walpole’s second volume in his Jeremy semi-autobiographical trilogy (Jeremy and Jeremy at Crale being the others) about a 10 year old boy. It’s the story of Jeremy and his two sisters, Helen and Mary Cole, who grow up in Polchester, a quiet English Cathedral town.

Written by Hugh Walpole, this is the literary biography of Joseph Conrad (1857 – 1924) who is regarded as one of the greatest novelists in English literary history.

The Old Ladies (1924) is a study of a timid elderly spinster exploited and eventually frightened to death by a predatory widow.

Olva Dune is a Cambridge undergraduate who commits a murder and at that moment feels the presence of God. In a tour de force Walpole novelizes the Francis Thompson poem The Hound of Heaven, about a fearful soul pursued by an insistently loving God. 

Written in the first person, The Secret City is a novel in three parts of a journey through post World War I Russia and the Revolution, during a period of Civil War and economic collapse. Listen to the audiobook

The year is 1919 and peace has sprung upon the world after the unspeakable carnage of World War I. Listen to the full audiobook.

Walpole’s first novel (1909), The Wooden Horse is the story of the Trojans, a family which accepted tranquilly the belief that they were the people for whom the world was created.