The Fool of Love

Sparkling, sinister, occasionally comic and often moving, The Fool of Love describes the quest of a schoolboy for love and affection against the background of an almost deserted country house during the First World War. Rupert Fiennes-Templeton is an only child. His perpetually unfaithful father left for France in 1914 with the Grenadier Guards, and his mother has devoted herself to hospital work. Home for the holidays, Rupert meets a German prisoner of war working in the kitchen garden. The boy is intrigued, fascinated and finally bewitched by the enigmatic Ernst. Swiftly Rupert discovers how fragile are the conventions of his small world; how narrow and naive his outlook. As the story unfolds, convenience masquerades as affection, loyalty is rarely returned, hatred withers before friendship, and love proves impervious and destructive. Widely praised as a diarist and biographer, James Lees-Milne has conjured up in his third novel an unforgettable portrait of country house life, a vivid array of characters from above and below stairs, and an intense and dramatic story.