The Spring House by Cynthia Asquith

It is 1915, and Miranda Gray is spending the war on the other side of the Atlantic to her husband. Staying with her eccentric relatives and young son at her family’s stately home, Miranda struggles to find her wartime role. Is she to play the graceful daughter of the house, the anxious wife of a distant military man, the stoic nurse, the promiscuous London hostess, or some uneasy amalgamation of these staid identities? Gradually, as the war brings death and destruction to those closest to her, Miranda is offered a glimpse of something beyond these stilted roles – a chance at real love.

The Spring House artfully balances humour and devastation; at once a deftly written psychological portrait and a social document revealing the slow birth of the twentieth century and the new woman.