Manchester, 1867. Widowed in mysterious circumstances and compelled to marry again by his domineering father Frederick, Brook Ferguson selects as his new bride the beautiful, strong-willed Cordelia. But after she comes to live with Brook and Frederick, as well as their household of eccentric family members, it isn't long before Cordelia is locked in a quiet war of dominance with the elder Ferguson. In the stifling atmosphere of the Ferguson's manor house, petty arguments escalate and any small defiance becomes a grand betrayal, until the tension forces Cordelia out into the world in search of something more.
Which is just when theatre-owner Stephen Crossley, with his quick wit and easy smile, strolls into her life - and Cordelia is forced to make the hardest decision of all: Loyalty... or love?
A passionate romance, shot through with dark humour and melancholy, Cordelia is a modern classic of the Gothic genre from the bestselling author of Marnie.
'Excellent' TLS
'Cordelia has the virtues of readability, of convincing motive and emotion and of vivid background . . . all the excellent Victorian ingredients - guilty love, surrender, pathos and comedy. It is enthralling from start to finish, a beguiling journey backwards in time.' Scotsman
Winston Mawdsley Graham OBE was an English novelist, best known for the series of historical novels about the Poldarks. Graham was born in Manchester in 1908, but moved to Perranporth, Cornwall when he was seventeen. His first novel, The House with the Stained Glass Windows was published in 1933. His first 'Poldark' novel, Ross Poldark, was published in 1945, and was followed by eleven further titles, the last of which, Bella Poldark, came out in 2002. The novels were set in Cornwall, especially in and around Perranporth, where Graham spent much of his life, and were made into a BBC television series in the 1970s. It was so successful that vicars moved or cancelled church services rather than try to hold them when Poldark was showing.
Aside from the Poldark series, Graham's most successful work was
Marnie, a thriller which was filmed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1964. Hitchcock had originally hoped that Grace Kelly would return to films to play the lead and she had agreed in principle, but the plan failed when the principality of Monaco realised that the heroine was a thief and sexually repressed. The leads were eventually taken by Tippi Hedren and Sean Connery. Five of Graham's other books were filmed, including
The Walking Stick,
Night Without Stars and
Take My Life. Graham wrote a history of the Spanish Armadas and an historical novel,
The Grove of Eagles, based in that period. He was also an accomplished writer of suspense novels. His autobiography,
Memoirs of a Private Man, was published by Macmillan in 2003. He had completed work on it just weeks before he died. Graham was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and in 1983 was honoured with the OBE.
