The Legacy of Hartlepool Hall - Softcover

Ed Hartlepool has been living in self-imposed exile for five years, but with a settlement regarding his inheritance looming, he must return to his ancestral seat, Hartlepool Hall. On his return, he discovers that his father has left him, along with the house, a seven million pound tax bill, two massive overdrafts, an eighty-year-old butler, and a vast country estate that is creaking at the seams. Not only that, but there is a strange woman in residence at Hartlepool Hall who seems to have made herself very much at home. It turns out that 'Lady Alice' was his father's first mistress and she tells him more about his father than Ed ever discovered during his life.

With the debts mounting, it seems that Ed's only recourse is to turn to his friend Annabel's new boyfriend, a property developer who plans to turn Hartlepool Hall into luxury flats and a golf course. But can Ed save his inheritance without such a drastic move and thereby preserve a way of life that has been in his family for generations? And is Lady Alice really the person she claims to be?

'Torday, as he demonstrated in his debut novel Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, is an extravagantly gifted writer' Mail on Sunday

'One of the most outstanding authors to have emerged in recent years' Daily Express

[author photo] © Jerry Bauer

Paul Torday burst on to the literary scene in 2006 with Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, an immediate international bestseller that has been published in 25 countries and is being released as a film starring Ewan McGregor, Kristin Scott Thomas and Emily Blunt. His subsequent novels, which include The Girl on the Landing and The Hopeless Life of Charlie Summers have also published to great critical acclaim.