The Sacred Combe
THOMAS MALONEY

It’s a familiar scenario. The protagonist, after some definitive break with the past, finds him- or herself at a mysterious mansion, often the ancient seat of a decaying family. They infiltrate and either heal, in the optimistic version, or are themselves dragged down; in either case they transform along the way. Rebecca, Bleak House and Jane Eyre are obvious examples, along with Brideshead Revisited and The Woman in Black. In children’s literature the genre encompasses the Harry Potter and Narnia series, The Secret Garden and Elizabeth Goudge’s magical The Little White Horse.

So it’s not much of a surprise that Thomas Maloney’s miserable divorced hero, Samuel Browne, finds himself in such a mansion. Buying a complete set of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall in a second-hand shop, he observes, pasted into one of the volumes, an undated job advertisement for a library archivist. On applying, Sam finds the position still vacant and heads off to Combe Hall in deepest winter, searching not so much for adventure as a place to heal his battered soul.