User:HannahKiwi/Westwood (novel)

Westwood is a novel by Stella Gibbons, first published in the UK in 1946 as Westwood, or, The Gentle Powers, and in America in the same year as The Gentle Powers by Dodd, Mead & Company. It came after The Bachelor (1944) and before Conference at Cold Comfort Farm (1949).

The plot centres on Margaret Steggles, a school teacher who relocates with her family to London. After moving to Highgate, Margaret becomes acquainted, and fascinated, with a painter Alexander Niland and his father-in-law, playwright Gerard Challis. It is set in 1943 in the context of World War II.

The character of Gerard Challis is based on Charles Morgan, a writer who was a contemporary of Gibbons.

The novel was adapted for BBC Radio 4 Extra by writer Lynne Truss and broadcast in 2004, the adaptation partly prompting the reprint of the novel by Vintage Books in 2011.

Despite its lack of success in comparison with Cold Comfort Farm, Westwood was Gibbons's favourite of her novels, according to her biographer and nephew Reggie Oliver.


 * http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/aug/07/stella-gibbons-westwood-starlight-vintage
 * http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Yh7Ls13SuegC&pg=PT20&dq=westwood+AND+gibbons&hl=en&sa=X&ei=apWAT_LRH8SzhAeE--ieBw&ved=0CEkQ6AEwAzgK#v=onepage&q=westwood%20AND%20gibbons&f=false