Young Phillip Maddison

Young Phillip Maddison (1953) was the third entry in Henry Williamson's fifteen-volume A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight spanning the years from the late Victorian period to the Second World War. It carries forward the story of Phillip as he grows towards manhood in the years immediately preceding the Great War. Unpredictable and wayward, Phillip nevertheless possesses a keen love of nature, which he indulges as best he can in the nearby countryside. But as his schooldays draw to a close he seems destined to follow his father by working in the Moon Fire Office, in the smoky heart of the greatest metropolis the world has ever seen. 'Williamson's style is romantic, though rarely sentimental, and his sensuous response to nature is fresh and surprising.' Anthony Burgess, Ninety-Nine Novels: The Best in English since 1939

Henry Williamson (1895-1977) was a prolific writer best known for Tarka the Otter which won the Hawthornden Prize in 1927. He wrote much of else of quality including The Wet Flanders Plain, The Flax of Dream tetralogy and the fifteen volume A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight all of which are being reissued in Faber Finds. His politics were unfortunate, naively and misguidedly right-wing. In truth, he was a Romantic. The critic George Painter famously said of him, 'He stands at the end of the line of Blake, Shelley and Jefferies: he is last classic and the last romantic.'