Wireless Quality of Service

Lighthearted and fun to read, this is a novel to keep and read again whenever one needs cheering up. The house is a stately home inherited by Sydney, Lord Otterton in 1945. The new owner has recently been released from a German prisoner-of-war camp where he was sent after campaigning in the desert. He suffers from nightmares about the war and finds it difficult to adjust to civilian life but he must take on the task of running the estate and restore his neglected property. Death duties loom, money is short, his terrifying old mother still haunts the dower house and were it not for his splendidly resourceful wife, Priscilla, he would be tempted to run away. The story of what happens over the next few years is told through the device of letters and diaries written by various members of the household. There is Annie, Lord and Lady Otterton's right-hand woman, whose father still lives in a tied cottage. Her practical and amused view of life shines through her writing and is contrasted with the lush style bristling with adjectives employed by Zbigniew Rakowski, the elderly Polish historian bent on compiling a history of the family. Guests, servants, tenants and children all contribute to an increasingly complex plot, a fertile ground for misunderstandings and mysteries to thrive. Teresa Waugh is deft in her choice of background information - rationing, elections, attitudes and privations - but these details illuminate her characters rather than drowning them. Her enjoyment in creating such eccentric, Mitford-like people and situations shines through every line. The reader is reminded of the post-war novels of Angela Thirkell but without the political bias that spoiled the charm of those stories. Waugh's House is both affectionate and moving. (Kirkus UK)