The Corner That Held Them

Sylvia Townsend Warner

In memory of the wife who had once dishonoured and always despised him Brian de Retteville founded Oby - a twelfth-century convent in a hidden corner of Norfolk. Two centuries later the Benedictine community is well established there and as befits a convent whose origin had such chequered motives the inhabitants are prey to the ambitions squabbles jealousies and pleasures of less spiritual environments. An outbreak of the Black Death the collapse of the convent spire the Bishop's visitation and a nun's disappearance are interwoven with the everyday life of the nuns novices successive Prioresses and the nun's priest in this affectionate and ironic observation of the more wordly history of a religious order.>