No One Now Will Know

In 1910-1914, Callie Lempriere is sent home from Barbados, where she attempts to piece together the mystery surrounding her family, the death of her mother and the ’exile’ of her Uncle Lucy. ’No One Now Will Know’ looks at three generations of the Lempriere family from the 1890’s to 1939. Delafield shows how the impact of violent emotions and dramatic events leave their mark for life on those who are then young.

Born to Count Henry de la Pasture and his novelist wife, Delafield (1890-1943) was brought up according to strict Late Victorian precepts, but failing to ensnare a husband, she entered a convent in Belgium the moment she was 21. Having recovered from this experience she became a VAD, (voluntary nursing for the war effort) and wrote her first novel. Delafield started publishing in her mid twenties and the year her fourth novel Consequences was published, she married Paul Dashwood, a civil engineer turned land agent; three years in Malaya was followed by life in rural Devon. Many of her novels and short stories are semi-autobiographical or stem from her experiences living abroad and in the rural countryside.