This latest book by Julian Fane tells three stories linked by the personal consequences, the glory and the grief, of the Second World War. In The Third Time, Cath is seventeen and lives in the big house in a Somerset hamlet. She is attractive and expected to marry well. But the war throws old class distinctions aside, at least for the young. Who will win her heart? To which of her suitors will her conventional parents give their blessing - the handsome farmer's boy Danny, the forceful Major Leigh Ashton, rich and a war hero, or Roy Fincham from South Ruislip, her diffident boss at the War Office? The hero or villain of The First Nail, Alexander Morfe, is a twentieth-century Don Juan. He preys upon women, or is he their victim? As a wine merchant in the 1930s he travels through France breaking hearts, and in the war he lands his ideal job: bearing bad news to war widows and doling out comfort. But he tempts providence once too often. Addy Deverel has bad luck to start with, then perhaps too much good luck. She is charming, handsome, an heiress who finds her Mr Right (and retains the affection of Mr Wrong), a mother of five and an all-round success.

But war is declared, the sons she loves have to go to fight, and The Last Straw describes the effects on her family and herself. Poignant, entertaining and nostalgic, these tales recreate a lurid wartime world where life was cheap and love was under extraordinary pressure.