First published in 1984, this famous novel has been reissued. Helena sits reading 'The Times' on THE CAMOMILE LAWN at her beach house in Cornwall, while the news is all of impending war. Helena would rather not think about such matters - her first husband died in the Great War and her second husband lost a leg in the trenches. Her nephew Oliver has just returned from the Civil War in Spain and she hopes the summer influx of young cousins will do them all good.

As the news becomes gloomier and official edits are issued, the young people plan on enlisting, except Calypso who is determined to marry someone wealthy. Some of them had been to Germany. Young Sophy is the innocent one, adored by all the group except Helena, her reluctant stepmother. The young people play a half-serious game suggested by depressed Oliver, in which someone must kill a person in the next five years. The war forces them all to adapt; Helena has to do with fewer staff, taking in an Austrian Jewish musical couple; the young men enlist and Calypso marries well. Sophy is still at boarding school. They keep in touch as best they can, often in the three-minute phone calls allowed.

These are the kind of well-off people who owned homes in Knightsbridge and drove cars, who had money to buy houses in London during the bombing when others sold cheaply. Those who went to war expected to be officers sooner rather than later, and the intensity of the times made them all live crowded private lives. Mature Helena has a pent-up sexuality expressed in a relationship, while others, on leave, take brief comfort in warm arms. Sophy has already lived through a terrifying experience. Long after the war, on the road to a funeral, Helena and Polly reminisce about those years and the changes they brought.

The continued focus on people being awfully brave, dining at the Ritz and attending classical music concerts, can become tedious for readers looking for a more holistic view of the war years. Mary Wesley however was writing of times she recalled and had a certain 'set' of readers in mind. The main contrast is with the Jewish couple, whose son is in a camp where the Red Cross have no access. As the unconventional is accepted in the press of war, nobody's life could have been foreseen from THE CAMOMILE LAWN.