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The Spanish Farm Trilogy, 1914-1918

by R. H. Mottram

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1927. The three novels of the Trilogy are: The Spanish Farm, prefaced by John Galsworthy, and winner of the Hawthornden Prize in 1924; Sixty-Four, Ninety-Four!; and The Crime at Vanderlynden's. Reviewing the three together, The Atlantic Monthly said: A trilogy, beautifully written, the finest treatment of a wartime motif yet achieved in English fiction. Between these three novels now appear for the first time in book form three connecting pieces: D'Archeville, The Winner and The Stranger.… (more)
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1927. The three novels of the Trilogy are: The Spanish Farm, prefaced by John Galsworthy, and winner of the Hawthornden Prize in 1924; Sixty-Four, Ninety-Four!; and The Crime at Vanderlynden's. Reviewing the three together, The Atlantic Monthly said: A trilogy, beautifully written, the finest treatment of a wartime motif yet achieved in English fiction. Between these three novels now appear for the first time in book form three connecting pieces: D'Archeville, The Winner and The Stranger.

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The Spanish Farm is both an intricate portrait of the First World War from a civilian perspective – of life lived against a background of bombardment and machine guns - and a stark portrayal of the intricacies and reality of love and romance during wartime. 

Book 1: The Spanish Farm 

As hundreds of thousands of young men enlist to fight on the Western Front, the Spanish Farm, standing amongst the undisturbed pastures of Flanders and built to withstand the wars of an earlier century, faces the horrors of the First World War with the same imperturbable stolidity. 

Billeted out as accommodation for the thousands of young soldiers heading to and from the trenches, the farm becomes an oasis of enduring sanity for those who pass through its doors. 

It is run by the notoriously tenacious farmer’s daughter, Madeleine Vanderlynden, a woman with the determination and business skill to rival any man’s. 

Her Spanish Farm becomes a home to the wounded and damaged troops who have experienced the horrors of the Western Front - and a refuge from a world that appears to have gone mad. 

Book 2: Sixty-Four, Ninety-Four 

Geoffrey Skene has been fighting as a Lieutenant in the trenches for a year, coming close to death on many occasions. 

Now he has a way out. 

His ability to speak fluent French leads to him being chosen to translate for a Flemish woman claiming damages for the billet she runs: the Spanish Farm… 

A turn of fate that may well have saved his life by taking him away from the front-line, the job also serves as his introduction to Madeleine Vanderlynden as she becomes synonymous with the farm itself - a kind of sanctuary providing the care and comfort that war is utterly devoid of. 

And over time, in his desperation to be cared for, he begins to fall for her... 

Book 3: Crime at Vanderlynden’s 

Fired up by patriotic duty, Stephen Doughty Dormer joins the Army soon after the Great War begins. 

Instead of defending his homeland, he is ordered to France, where he soon to discovers that being a clerk in the war is hardly different from being one at home, only dirtier and more dangerous. 

Then one day, a claim for damages done to a Flemish billet by a British soldier is received by Divisional Headquarters. And Dormer is assigned orders to track down the soldier who committed the ‘crime’ at the Spanish Farm… 

Along with the endless waiting of the war, the constant demand for reparation for a crime that was never committed threatens to drive Dormer to distraction. 

'The Spanish Farm' is widely acknowledged as one of the great classics of World War One fiction, ranked alongside 'Goodbye To All That' and 'The Secret Battle'. 

‘The most significant work of its kind’ - The Times Literary Supplement 

R H Mottram served in France from 1914 to 1919. The Spanish Farm was first published in 1924 and won the Hawthornden Prize. Mottram wrote some sixty books altogether and in 1966 he was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters by the University of East Anglia. He died in 1971.
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