The passage describing his wi e's death is simply written but heartrending

Your last no el was awarded more than 15 literary awards, including the Whitbread Book o the Year prize. Some o these date rom the 1960s and yet there's little sign o a world grinding to the Rolling Stones and a sexual re olution. Instead she created a musty and clandestine en ironment, like a secret pocket stitched into an old raincoat. And although Warner li ed with the poet alentine Ackland in what would now be called a same-sex marriage, these stories illustrate little aith in matrimony. Mrs Benson ends up certi ied on her embarrassed husband's direction, and in "Such a Wonder ul Opportunity" an old church warden notes "men always ha e their work, just as the oxes ha e holes" whilst wi es are "le t with all the real li e part o it".Warner's stories are undeniably pass? illed as they are with retired majors and parish gossip, but then they requently were e en at the time o writing. Many o them appear in this collection, some unpublished since they irst hit the Manhattan news-stands more than 70 years ago. Country estates, summer lets and illage shops (along with their eccentric occupants) were all grist to Warner's literary mill.

The Honourable Mrs Benson, the mad anti-heroine o "A Dressmaker", wanders the downs in her ballgown trailing hands "with the un arnished nails o those who ha e grown disheartened". As I stepped into the sunny haze o the porch I was con ronted with a looming igure silhouetted in the long hallway, one twiggy hand tipped with a smouldering black Russian cigarette. Smoke ho ered around Warner as her belo ed cats, Moth and Pericles, orbited her eet. or me, such i id impressions, steeped in domesticity and witchery, in use Dorset Stories, a wonder ul new collection. rom the 1930s through to her inal years she despatched short stories to William Maxwell, who was iction editor at The New Yorker, with the proceeds helping to keep paper in the typewriter and the roo o er her head leak- ree. Shortly be ore Syl ia Townsend Warner's death in the late 1970s I was taken to meet her by my ather, a long-time riend o the author Her Dorset home sat spooned by a bend in the Ri er rome.

E eryone seems to be speaking in an idiom at least 10 years too young or them. The long-awaited de il is brilliantly described, but his insights are co ee-table commonplaces.This is a hard no el to dislike, but a still harder one to praise rom the gut. Beneath all the tragedies, the intimations o mystery and magic, the intense and essentially undergraduate ponti ications about aith, lies a lu y message itsel all too reminiscent o an earnest, erring, perhaps secretly agnostic icar's homily.. The passage describing his wi e's death is simply written but heart-rending. The narrator remains sympathetic despite his a owed hypocrisy, his agonising, and his treachery to his best riend. When the de il assures Mack that he will see Hell when he next isits his declining mother, he is pro ed right in a chillingly persuasi e passage.But as the no el ad ances, the strong, lyrical oice o Mack increasingly gi es way to tepid dialogue. Mack's ather, the minister, could easily ha e remained a kirk clich?but Robertson is in some ways on his side: he gi es him some o the no el's most power ul insights.