Deborah Alun-Jones

The English rectory nestling beside an ancient church may evoke a scene from Jane Austen or conjure up something much darker, such as the parsonage on the Yorkshire Moors where the Brontë sisters led their confined yet creative lives. This engaging, deeply researched book explores the lives of writers and poets who were either the children of clergy, such as Tennyson and Dorothy L. Sayers, or those, such as Rupert Brooke and John Betjeman, who were seduced by the romance and values that these houses suggest. The serene exterior often belied tensions within that have produced some of the greatest writers and poets in the English language.