Summer, 1914. Clara, a passionate young London wife and the mother of two small girls, is married to Henry, a manager at an insurance company, but the marriage is not in good shape. Both of them have, in their own ways, given up on it.

Henry begins an affair with a woman at work while Clara, unaware of Henry’s transgressions, meets James, a divorced man who works at the Foreign Office. Now Clara has to fight against both the conventions of the time and her own conscience as she finds herself being drawn into the relationship with James.

Meanwhile, in the capitals of Europe, the great men of the day – Sir Edward Grey, the British Foreign Secretary, the Tsar, the Kaiser and others – are beginning the chain of terrible decisions that will lead to the outbreak of the First World War. Just as it is with all of us, their personalities, fears and insecurities drive their thought processes and determine the choices they make. And just as in recent times, we see great men making terrible decisions.

War is declared and Clara, who now knows of Henry’s affair, is madly in love with James. When Henry and James enlist, both for different reasons, Clara must now begin the long vigil, waiting to see which, if either of them, will return from the fighting. 

Fergus O’Connell is the award-nominated author of ‘Call the Swallow’, and has written over seventeen novels, books for children and business books. His work has been translated into over twenty languages. fergusoconnell.com

The Four Lights Quartet

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