Childhood at Oriol

Originally published in a very limited printing in England in 1951, this enchanting rediscovery is set in a small villa among the dunes of Le Toquet. It is the story of two energetic, mischievous and sensitive children and their encounters with a privileged set of adult visitors who are in Normandy for the season and who could well have stepped out of a novel by P.G. Wodehouse. This magical novel, which takes place between two world wars, will remind readers of Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle and Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals.

Michael Burn will be 95 when Childhood at Oriol is released. As a reporter for The Times, he covered both the abdication of Edward VIII, later the Duke of Windsor, and the faked Hungarian trial of Cardinal Mindszenty.