The Dangerous Edge Of Things - Hardcover

1949: Candida Lycett Green describes one year in her childhood in the remote village of Farnborough in Berkshire, where she lived with her father John Betjeman and her mother Penelope Chetwode. In one of the bleakest and highest spots on the windswept downland, Candida runs wild with the ‘Gang’, mostly children of farm labourers.

Against the vivid backdrop of the unfolding farming year, the Gang roams freely, befriending Mr Williams, a veteran of the First World War who lives in an isolated cottage with Miss Walker, a former governess with a mysterious past. Stimulated by regular excursions to the Pictures in Wantage, Candida and her best friend June become fascinated by the idea of love. Their romantic imagination fuelled by the beautiful Ruby Mason, who cleans the cottage of a reclusive scientist at the neighbouring Harwell Atomic Research Centre, Dr Fox. They stealthily engineer a romance between the two and spend the summer revelling in the secret love affair they seem to have instigated – until it is revealed that none of the children’s special adult friends are what they seemed, and the real world shockingly intervenes to overturn their innocence.

In THE DANGEROUS EDGE OF THINGS, Candida Lycett Green depicts the unchanging life of the villagers running alongside the revolutionary atomic science that was being created on their doorstep. Skilfully combining her childhood memories with elements of fiction, she has written a book infused with an irresistible love of the English countryside reminiscent of such classics as LARK RISE TO CANDLEFORD and AKENFIELD, sharply evoking a way of life that has passed for ever.

1949: Candida Lycett Green describes one year in her magical childhood in the remote farming village of Farnborough in Berkshire, where she lived with her eccentric, bohemian upper-class parents among the local farming community. In one of the bleakest and highest spots in the county, 750 feet up in the windswept downland, Candida ran wild with a "Gang" of the children of local farm labourers, and their discoveries and adventures are set against a vivid backdrop of village life and the unfolding agricultural and natural year. Parents play a minor part in the activities of The Gang, whose non-school hours are spent roaming freely around the countryside, and it is during these romps that Candida and her friend June become interested in the concetp of Love.

Their romantic imagination is fuelled by their secret surveillance of local beauty Ruby Mason, who they discover cleans the cottage of a reclusive German scientist working at the neighbouring Harwell Atomic Research Centre. A romance between Ruby and the German is imagined, or engineered, by Candida and June's stealthy intervention, and the two girls spend the summer revelling in the secret love affair they seem to have instigated. Then sensational tragedy strikes. Ruby's lover is no other than the idealistic Dr Klaus Fuchs, who was arrested for having passed the secret of the atom bom to the Russians. Another eccentric subplot involves a World War One veteran living on the edge of the village with a female companion, who shows the children his medals, rants and rails against the Germans, but, when he dies, to the scandal of the village turns out to have been a woman.

Beautifully written, infused with an irresistible love of the English countryside, and skilfully, daringly, combining real events with fiction, this is a book about childish adventure and loss of innocence that reminds us of an idyllic rustic way of life that has sadly passed forever.