Challiss of Uppham

Fictional Uppham St Mary is revisited in this light-hearted sequel to The Lime Walk. 1837. Egoist Thomas Henry Challiss graduates from university and celebrates by visiting Newmarket races. Afterwards, while drunk he commits a serious crime. To avoid public disgrace he flees to London's East End where his younger brother Robert manages the family sugar business. Robert has married in haste, is an opium addict and owes his father-in-law the huge sum that has funded it. Thomas Henry returns to Uppham. His widowed father is exhausted by financial worries. Mr Challiss expects his son to share the burden of managing the estate. Thomas Henry makes it clear that it is his ambition to have his own school. He tolerates his three sisters but is initially disgusted to find that his father's bastard son, James, has been installed as one of the family. The precocious boy wins his half-brother's love and respect. Discouraged by the derelict state into which house and land have sunk, young Challiss seeks comfort and diversion in nearby Downham. His ego is further deflated when an older woman spurns his attempts at seduction but he is unaware that she has devised a plan to entrap him. By turns serious, humorous, sad and thought-provoking, Challiss of Uppham is an engaging work of fiction that paints a lively and realistic picture of early Victorian life in a Norfolk village. It will appeal to lovers of historical, romantic fiction and will transport readers from the mundane to the imaginative world glimpsed through the eyes of a four-year-old boy.