The Day Thou Gavest

The Day Thou Gavest is the third novel in the Village Tales series.

Synopsis
One day in the Woolfonts, from midnight to midnight: railway operations, births, deaths, ducal scheming, archaeological scholarship, breakfasts, luncheons, dinners, ducal plans for the revived former cottage hospital and for recreating the early 19th Century canal, brewery operations, and village life.

Main characters introduced
Matt Silverthorne, George Alford, Charlie Barter, and Will Dowdell, all of the Woolfonts & Chickmarsh Railway; the Towers, of the Home Farm; Peter Fanner the Postie; Jemmie Dally and Ernie Bellin, the milkmen – and competition carriage-drivers; the Burtts, farmers; Nora Standeven and Betty Crabtree, Edmond’s mum and eldest sister; Dame Edith Rice, Fifties-era West End star and now Drama mistress at the Beechbourne Free School; Mrs Agnes Pressley, Matron of the old almshouse; Pippa Cavel, publisher and editor-in-chief of the Beechbourne Herald & Courier; Wally Parfitt, driver, the R14 omnibus; Miss Coombs and Miss Woolley of the Village School (C of E VA); the Agninis, restaurateurs and makers of ice cream; Graeme Sims BM BCh FRCOG, obstetrics; Gabriel Spackman, Chris Barter, and Phil Noble, thatchers; Ms ‘M’ Anderson-Harris, American Rhodes (Must Fall) Scholar at Oxford; Professor Halloran the Junior Proctor; Travis Bolling Martinez-Henderson III, American Marshall Scholar at Oxford, and Ms Anderson-Harris’ antithesis; Susan Allred the novelist and her son Pip; Mrs Brickell, local purity campaigner in the Vale; Luke Revel, popular camboy in the Vale, and bane of Mrs Brickell’s existence; DI Martin Brockway, Wilts Police, who wishes both Luke Revel and Mrs Brickell to the Devil; Graham Gates, Teddy’s father, that very civil civil engineer; Poppy van Meteren and India Charlton, socialities, Oxford undergraduates, and celebrated double act; Alex Burchard and his adult children Andrew and Karen, farriers; Dame Antonia Freemantle-Ridgeway, ceramic artist and sculptor.

Setting(s)
The Woolfonts, the Downlands, the Vale, Chickmarsh, and Beechbourne, Wilts; Oxford; London.