The fool of love

James Lees-Milne

The novel 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.