Spoils of Time Trilogy
1 primary work • 3 total works 3 total works planned
Book 3
The Second World War is over, peace has been declared but the ravages remain and the Lytton family must confront the future and themselves. Kit Lytton, blinded in his early twenties in service for the RAF, is coming to terms with the fact that his father is not Oliver Lytton, as he thought, but the famous children's author Sebastian Brooke. His sense of betrayal is immense, but worse is the discovery that the woman he loves is his sister. Barty Miller is now in the curious position of owning a majority share of Lyttons, the publishing house belonging to the family that brought her up. Now rich and powerful, though alone, Barty is far from the cowed slum child rescued by Celia Lytton years before. But how will she act now towards the family who always made her feel she did not belong? And what secrets in the Lytton past remain to be discovered?
v. 1
Set against the background of first the belle epoque, that Edwardian era of immense luxury and immense social deprivation, moving into the horrors of the First World War and finally the outrageous glamour of the twenties, No Angel is a study in personal power, in family politics and the conflict between right and expediency; it is also a very great love story. Celia Lytton - strong willed, tough, immensely courageous - moves through life taking difficult and often dangerous decisions, both for herself and for others, with far reaching consequences for all of them.
For Oliver Lytton, her husband, head of the great publishing house of Lytton, into which she moves as his wife at the age of only eighteen; for Sylvia Miller, whose own life of relentless poverty is changed forever by Celia's intrusion into it; for Barty, Sylvia's youngest daughter, removed from her family to join the Lyttons, to her great benefit - and also her great cost; for LM, Oliver's daunting elder sister, a match for Celia in will, but not in emotional experience; for the American branch of the family, living out their own dramas in New York but drawn nonetheless into the Lytton web; and for Sebastian Brooke, author of a legendary children's book, whose personal as well as his professional life is taken over by Celia and with whom she makes what is perhaps the most dangerous decision of all. And of course, for Lyttons itself, changed and shaped as it is by Celia's leading part in its conduct. When does the end justify the means? Can wrong ever become right? And is anything entirely black - or indeed white? No Angel asks all these questions - and tries to answer them.
It is volume one in a series, The Spoils of Time, which follows the Lyttons through the first fifty years of the twentieth century.
For Oliver Lytton, her husband, head of the great publishing house of Lytton, into which she moves as his wife at the age of only eighteen; for Sylvia Miller, whose own life of relentless poverty is changed forever by Celia's intrusion into it; for Barty, Sylvia's youngest daughter, removed from her family to join the Lyttons, to her great benefit - and also her great cost; for LM, Oliver's daunting elder sister, a match for Celia in will, but not in emotional experience; for the American branch of the family, living out their own dramas in New York but drawn nonetheless into the Lytton web; and for Sebastian Brooke, author of a legendary children's book, whose personal as well as his professional life is taken over by Celia and with whom she makes what is perhaps the most dangerous decision of all. And of course, for Lyttons itself, changed and shaped as it is by Celia's leading part in its conduct. When does the end justify the means? Can wrong ever become right? And is anything entirely black - or indeed white? No Angel asks all these questions - and tries to answer them.
It is volume one in a series, The Spoils of Time, which follows the Lyttons through the first fifty years of the twentieth century.
v.2
The dazzling Lytton twins, Adele and Venetia, grow up with the world at their feet. Born into the great Lytton publishing empire, they are rich and admired, with a confidence verging on arrogance. At eighteen, in 1928, their future seems assured. But the spectre of Nazi Germany is growing...Gradually the twins' lives darken in unimaginable ways, as they struggle to cope with circumstances their privileged world has not prepared them for. But it is not just the twins whose lives have been irrevocably changed: Barty Miller, rescued from the London slums in babyhood by Celia Lytton, clever, ambitious, and a complete contrast to the twins, is faced with a temptation of the most unexpected kind...Following on from the bestselling NO ANGEL, SOMETHING DANGEROUS is a riveting drama and a fascinating love story.