The four Wiltshire children live a comfortable middle-class English life. But as WWII overtakes the country, the family, like so many others, slowly disintegrates. Told from the perspective of the children, Saplings is 'immensely readable . . . a dark inversion of the author's best-known book, the children's classic Ballet Shoes' (Sunday Telegraph).

Laurel, at eleven, was conscious of being happy. She was almost afraid of it. 'I'll never be as happy again. When I'm quite old, as old as thirty, I'll come back to this bit of Easterbourne. I'll come on the same day in June and remember me now.'