A childhood visit to Longleat House in Bath made me fall in love with English stately homes, a consequence of which is an ongoing fondness for novels or movies located in such locations. Anna Hope’s fourth book is set in a veritable castle where the Brooke family gathers over five days to bury its patriarch, Philip, and discuss the future of the thousand acres he has left behind.
From the start, the tension between his children, Frannie, Milo and Isa, is only equalled by the froideur of their mother Grace and the quiet observations of his granddaughter, seven-year-old Rowan.
Frannie dreams of creating a nature reserve, linking the estate to other properties along England’s southeast coast. Milo wants to turn it into a luxury retreat for the super-rich. Isa doesn’t much care what happens to it as long as she can rekindle a teenage romance with the hot groundskeeper.
Hope draws the relationships between the siblings in an original manner. While they have different visions of their responsibilities towards the land, she avoids the cliche of having them continually at each other’s throats. Instead, they all make strong cases for what they believe should be done, and why.
However, it’s the arrival for the funeral of Clara, an American PhD student with a particular interest in the 18th century, that changes everything. She’s an intriguing figure, the reader never quite knowing how she fits into the story, but her appearance ultimately proves the catalyst for issues of historic accountability being addressed that threaten everything seven generations of this family has built.
I’ve read each of Hope’s previous novels, but Albion is her finest to date, raising questions regarding our obligations to the environment and contemporary accountability for the crimes of our ancestors. She offers no easy solutions, but then, as has been said before, the job of a novelist is not to provide answers, but to pose the questions better, an undertaking Hope succeeds in admirably.
With shades of Brideshead, as well as Elizabeth Jane Howard’s memorable Cazalet Chronicles, Albion is a welcome addition to the body of literature centred around inherited wealth, ancestral homes, and difficult family dynamics.
