Macaulay, Rose – The Bell Bookshop https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk Henley-on-Thames Sat, 08 Nov 2025 10:33:04 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9 https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/cropped-Bell-Background-Blue-32x32.png Macaulay, Rose – The Bell Bookshop https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk 32 32 They went to Portugal https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/product/they-went-to-portugal/ Thu, 11 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/?post_type=product&p=32625 Keeping Up Appearances https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/product/keeping-up-appearances/ Thu, 17 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/?post_type=product&p=20935 Part of a curated collection of forgotten works by early to mid-century women writers, the British Library Women Writers series highlights the best middlebrow fiction from the 1910s to the 1960s, offering escapism, popular appeal, and plenty of period detail to amuse, surprise, and inform.

Oh God, one should not go to parties, Daisy sighed, sinking in wan defeat in the melancholy dawn. One should not mingle with others; one should keep oneself to oneself?’

Lying awake after a hotel party on holiday in the Mediterranean, Daisy Simpson reflects on her lackluster social performance and muses on the impression her confident and graceful half-sister Daphne may have made on the other guests. What is it that makes Daphne, Daphne and Daisy, Daisy? And which of the two will attract the attentions of one of their hosts, Raymond, whom they have both fallen for?

Returning to London, Daisy’s life is strained by the efforts of presenting the right elements of her personality to the right people, resulting in embarrassments, difficulties and deceits as she navigates her relationships and social standing.

Rose Macaulay’s novel, first published in 1928, offers a sharp and witty commentary on how we twist our identities to fit, delivered in an intelligent and innovative style.

]]> Personal Pleasures https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/product/personal-pleasures/ Tue, 14 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/?post_type=product&p=16001 Personal Pleasures is an anthology of 80 short essays (some of them very short) about the things the feminist critic and nivelist Rose Macaulay enjoyed most in life. The complete list consists of:

  • Abroad
  • Album
  • Arm-Chair
  • Astronomy
  • Bakery in the Night
  • Bathing
  • 1 Off the Florida Keys
  • 2 Off the Ligurian Coast
  • 3 In the Cam
  • Bed
  • 1 Getting into it
  • 2 Not getting out of it
  • Believing
  • Bird in the Box
  • Book Auctions
  • Booksellers’ Catalogues
  • Bulls
  • Candlemas
  • Canoeing
  • Chasing Fireflies
  • Christmas Morning
  • Church-going
  • 1. Anglican
  • 2. Roman Catholic
  • 3. Quaker
  • 4. Unitarian
  • Cinema
  • Clothes
  • Cows
  • Departure of Visitors
  • Disbelieving
  • Doves in the Chimney
  • Driving a Car
  • Easter in the Woods
  • Eating and Drinking
  • Elephants in Bloomsbury
  • Fastest on Earth
  • Finishing a Book
  • Fire Engines
  • Flattery
  • Flower Shop in the Night
  • Flying
  • Following the Fashion
  • Fraternal
  • Getting Rid
  • Hatching Eggs
  • Heresies
  • Hot Bath
  • Ignorance
  • 1. Of one’s neighbours
  • 2. Of current literature
  • 3. Of gossip
  • 4. Of wickedness
  • 5. Of one’s pass-book
  • Improving the Dictionary
  • Listening In
  • Logomachy
  • Meals Out
  • 1 On the roof
  • 2 On the pavement
  • New Year’s Eve
  • Not Going to Parties
  • Parties
  • Play-Going
  • Pretty Creatures
  • Reading
  • Shopping Abroad
  • Showing Off
  • Solitude
  • Sunday
  • Taking Umbrage
  • Talking about a New Car
  • Telling Travellers’ Tales
  • Turtles in Hyde Park
  • Walking
  • Writing

While each essay can be read on its own as a short dose of delicious writing, the collection is also an autobiographical selection, revealing glimpses of Rose’s own life, and making us laugh helplessly with her inimitable humour.

]]> World My Wilderness https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/product/world-my-wilderness/ Thu, 08 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/product/world-my-wilderness/ It is 1946 and the people of France and England are facing the aftermath of the war. Banished by her beautiful, indolent mother to England, Barbary Deniston is thrown into the care of her distinguished father and conventional stepmother. Having grown up in the sunshine of Provence, allowed to run wild with the Maquis, experienced collaboration, betrayal and death, Barbary finds it hard to adjust to the drab austerity of postwar London life.

Confused and unhappy, she discovers one day the flowering wastes around St Paul’s. Here, in the bombed heart of London, she finds an echo of the wilderness of Provence and is forced to confront the wilderness within herself.

]]> Towers Of Trebizond https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/product/towers-of-trebizond/ Mon, 09 Jan 1995 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/product/towers-of-trebizond/ "'Take my camel, dear," said my Aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return to High Mass.' Thus starts, with one of the most famous opening lines in modern English literature, Rose Macaulay's classic novel, The Towers of Trebizond.

]]> “‘Take my camel, dear,” said my Aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return to High Mass.’ Thus starts, with one of the most famous opening lines in modern English literature, Rose Macaulay’s classic novel, The Towers of Trebizond.

As wise, civilised and wholly entertaining as it was when first published in 1956, the novel tells the beautifully absurd story of the inimitable Aunt Dot, her niece Laurie and Father Chantry-Pigg – and of their expedition together to Turkey to explore the possibility of establishing a High Anglican mission there. Each member of the party has an additional extra-curricular motivation for making the trip: Father Chantry-Pigg wishes to meet the fanatics in residence at the top of Mount Ararat; Aunt Dot is set on the emancipation of Turkish women through wider use of the bathing hat; Laurie’s object is
pure pleasure ?

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