The Last September (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)

Centred on the doomed world of Danielstown,ÊThe Last September is a sharply perceived comedy of manners set in the time of the Irish Troubles. The ambushes and burnings seem far removed up at the "Great House" where they are preoccupied by the tennis-parties and dances, not to mention flirtations with English officers from the local garrison. But "behind the trees, pressing in from the open and empty country like an invasion, the orange bright sky crept and smouldered" - foreshadowing the tragedy which reaches its climax in the calm, opulent sunlight of an Irish autumn.

The cover shows a detail from Girl Reading by Harold Knight in the Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston