Why a Booktrail?
2000s, 1940s: Just what are the secrets of Charcombe Park?
The Winter Secret
What you need to know before your trail
Buttercup Redmain has a life of pampered luxury, living in beautiful Charcombe Park. Her older husband, Charles Redmain, is wealthy and successful, and proud of the house he has painstakingly restored, once owned by a famous ancestor. However, her husband’s ex-wife Ingrid still lives nearby although Buttercup has never met her. And it soon becomes clear that all the people who make Buttercup’s life so carefree are also watching her every move. Does she actually live in a comfortable but inescapable cage? And what is the real story of her husband’s previous marriage?
Xenia Arkadyoff once lived in Charcombe Park with her father, a Russian prince, and her mother, a famous film star. Life seemed charmed, full of glamour and beauty. But behind the glittering facade lay pain, betrayal, and the truth about the woman Xenia spent her life protecting.
Now Charcombe Park is calling back people who were once part of its story, and the secrets that have stayed long hidden are bubbling inexorably to the surface . . .
Locations
Reset- England - Dorset
- A: Charcombe Manor
- B: Athelhampton
- England - London
- C: Harrods
- D: Palace of Westminster
Travel Guide
Dorset
The main setting in this novel is a fictional one – a house, a grand house somewhere in Dorset not far from the A303. Charcombe House sounds grand with its impressive archetecture and pannelled walls. But a gilded cage is still a cage and this is what it feels like for its present inhabitant – Mrs Redmain, married to Charles who works at Westminster, but is never home, and even when he is, his mind is elsewhere..
The new Mrs Redmain discovers it for the first time:
She hardly knew what to say as she went into a vast square hall hung with oil paintings, its ceiling a riot of colour with painted frescoes of gods, goddesses….”
“Marble busts on plinths stood along the walls and in the centre of the room a large round table held a giant glove vase with white hydrangea spilling out in frilly abundance, a fragment of summer in the depths of winter”
“A row of French windows looking out over a terrace and the manicured garden beyond…
It sounds lovely, but an old house has old secrets tucked away…and former inhabitants…
Booktrail Boarding Pass: The Winter Secret
Destination : Dorset, London Author/Guide: Lulu Taylor Departure Time: 1940s, 2000s
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