Seventeen-year-old Fanny's journey to London for the six weeks of coronation festivities gives Angela Thirkell a spendid opportunity to re-create the atmosphere of 19th-century England in a tale replete with period details and illustrations. Happily, the pomp and pageantry of London do little to distract Fanny from the more familiar Thirkellian concerns of the rigors of matchmaking and the rituals of courtship.