Peculiar Ground

Lucy Hughes-Hallett

4th Estate, £16.99

Review by Richard Strachan

LUCY Hughes-Hallett’s first novel initially seems to be a straightforward story of the gradual fall of a great English estate. Starting in the aftermath of the Restoration, it skips forward to the vicissitudes of the 1960s, 70s and 80s, before neatly tying up the narrative back where it started in the 1660s. But in its carefully framed structure and in the elegance of her prose the book soon reveals itself as a more subtle and powerful achievement, making profound thematic links between the turbulent politics of the mid-17th century and the surprisingly fluid ideologies of the Cold War period, as well as with our increasingly illiberal age.

In 1663, Mr Norris, a designer of ‘landskips’, has been hired by the Earl of Woldingham to wall off the grounds of Wychwood. An exile during the English Civil War and the Cromwellian Protectorate, Woldingham has returned to his estate determined to "create an Eden encompassing the house", so that "the outside world, with its shocks and annoyances, will be but a memory." As Norris designs his ornamental fountains, pathways and woods, he begins in his bumbling fashion to fall in love with Cecily, Woldingham’s niece from a side of the family allied to the Dissenting tradition during the recent conflict. When tragedy strikes Woldingham’s son, Norris soon discovers that the scars of the war run deeper than he suspected.

The novel then moves forward to the 20th century, where the bulk of the story takes place. In 1961, Wychwood is owned by Christopher and Lil Rossiter, living in a marriage strained by the death of their young son. Despite this, Christopher is a generous host to his many friends and family members. For some, the estate is a retreat from their memories of the Second World War; for others, it’s a louche backdrop to frivolous infidelity. When the summer season begins, Christopher and his land agent Hugo are more concerned about the increasing number of ramblers asserting their right of way along an ancient footpath through the estate, while the journalist Nicholas (one of Lil’s friends) has received a tip-off that the East Germans are preparing to build a wall between east and west Berlin. Keeping the outside world from intruding is more difficult than it seems, and as the narrative moves forward to 1973, we find the various children from the previous section having grown and trying to make their mark on that same outside world while still maintaining their uneasy links with Wychwood. Moving furtively through these parts is the figure of Antony Briggs, an art dealer loosely based on Anthony Blunt, whose half-hearted if initially idealistic Communism has seen him work as a slightly bemused agent for the Soviet Union. Moving forward to 1989, the story then aligns with the twin ideological events of the late 20th century; the fall of the Berlin Wall and the fatwa issued against Salman Rushdie for writing the Satanic Verses, and their impact on the people who live in the orbit of Wychwood. A final section returns the reader to the 1660s, as plague descends on the county and as Wychwood’s walls become an uneasy barrier to the dangers of a changing world.

Peculiar Ground covers a great deal of time in a great many pages, with a huge cast of characters (the dramatis personae at the beginning even includes entries for their dogs). However, as an award-winning historian and biographer, Hughes-Hallett is in full command of her material, expertly weaving her characters’ stories through each section and allowing their experiences to feel convincingly lived, rather than just recounted. At the core of the book is the theme of enclosure, of how walls can provide refuge, safety and imprisonment, and of how the natural instinct to safeguard can often lead to tragedy. Uneasy societies can rarely resist the urge to make definitions, whether East Germany’s delineation between east and west, or militant Islam’s ferocious judgement on acceptable speech. "Frontiers are drawn on maps as lines," Antony thinks as the Berlin Wall goes up, "but in experience they are broad smudges, gradual transitions … Yet here was a nation throwing up a palpable wall along an impalpable division. It was eerie. The materialisation of the imaginary."

Hughes-Hallett’s skill is in locating those judgements deep within human nature, avoiding the urge to condemn one way or the other, but still making clear how destructive a border can appear depending on which side of it you happen to be.