A Gay British Christmas

A British Christmas story about the families we choose, and the country house that gathers them in.In the week before Christmas, Finn and Aly open the doors of Silverbourne Chase, the family’s Oxfordshire estate above the Thames near Henley, for twelve days of Champagne, roaring fires, rowing club parties and Yorkshire puddings. Nine friends arrive, along with a fat and fiercely loved corgi named Braveheart, and every one of them brings a secret they would rather keep wrapped beneath the tree.Matt, a newly arrived Canadian who once hid behind a turkey crown in Waitrose rather than speak to strangers, finds himself welcomed into a world of half three, wish lists and rules nobody thought to explain. Archie is carrying an engagement ring and waiting for the right moment, Jonty cannot quite admit what he feels for the charming American Jack, and Aly is hiding a lie from Paris alongside a grief he has shared with no one. Meanwhile, a small silver cross found among the tree roots on the riverbank at Wallingford is quietly passing from hand to hand, stirring jealousy, confusion and an old family history that none of them yet understands.Each chapter takes its cue from the Twelve Days of Christmas, from partridges and turtle doves to drummers drumming, as the house fills with dares, debates, a candlelit power cut and a Christmas morning on which Aly leaves satsumas, orange juice and painkillers outside every bedroom door. In a playful dreamlike interlude, the friends are carried back through the Christmases of the past, from Roman Britain and Viking winters to Norman knights and Civil War Henley, before waking to find that the thing they were searching for was sitting beside them all along.When the twelve days end, the friends scatter to Berlin, Munich, Fulham and Wallingford for the turning of the year, where a midnight beneath Munich’s Angel of Peace changes everything for two of them. The formidable Lady Esmerelda returns from Bordeaux with a decanter of sherry and the truth about the silver cross, and on Epiphany morning two rowers take to the Tideway in a yellow double scull with Henley Royal Regatta on the horizon.This Parlour Edition of the seventh Silverbourne novel is a warmer, gentler telling of the original, rewritten and greatly expanded. It is a story about friendship that outlasts romance, about the newcomers we make room for at the table, and about the quiet acts of kindness that turn a house full of people into a home. Readers of Titanic to Thames will recognise the river, and the history the cross carries with it.For readers of Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City, Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love, Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited and Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat, and for anyone who loves a country house Christmas with a glass of something cold in hand.Human written with hand-drawn illustrations throughout. A Silverbourne Christmas novel, Parlour Edition, with a bibliography and a full editing history.