The Priory, by Dorothy Whipple

The eccentric widower, Major Francis Marwood, is cricket mad. He doesn't pay attention to much else in his life. He's a regular man's man. All he cares for is the annual cricket fortnight at his majestic yet long neglected property, Saunby. When the fifty-year-old Major meets Anthea Sumpton, over a decade his junior, he decides he is smitten and the two soon marry. The first flush of romance turns out to be just that, a mad, momentary excitement  that quickly dissipates into dreary reality. Anthea becomes pregnant, sequesters herself away from her husband and hires the redoubtable Nurse Pye to take charge. 

The Major's two adult daughters from a previous marriage, Penelope and Christine, try to ignore the new arrangements, until they are thrown out of their upstairs nursery which they have never left since they were born. As Anthea gets on with the business of pregnancy, the servants are creating dramas of their own, having affairs, unwanted pregnancies and other scandalous behaviour. Romance comes from an unexpected quarter for Christine when she takes up with one of the Major's favourite cricketers, Nicholas Ashwell. He comes from a solidly middle-class family, headed by self-made patriarch Sir James. All seems to be going well for Christine and Nicholas, but relationship problems suddenly strike and to cap it all off, World War Two is about to break. 

That's a short summary of an often madcap, sprawling, character driven novel that smartly chronicles the eclipse of the landed gentry by a rising middle-class Britain, and the threat of having it all smashed to pieces by war. Whipple has a touch of Charles Dickens in her comedic set pieces and keen sense of the ridiculous. The Priory often reads like a Downton Abbey spoof, but with the servants running the show and the hapless aristocrats looking on bewildered. The novel is perhaps lopsided, with the first half a carnival of headstrong characters vying with each other for supremacy, while the tone of the second half becomes more dramatic, focusing on Christine's marriage and the possibility of war. 

Another fine re-issue from Persephone Books. Perhaps a tad long, but still compulsively readable.