From master author R. F. Delderfield, the first in the beloved classic God Is an Englishman series." Horne, Donald; Footscray Institute of Technology (1985). How to be an Intellectual (Speech). Footscray, Victoria: Footscray Institute of Technology. ISBN 978-0-908533-93-0. Over the next three years, Adam and Henrietta were married. Their first child was born 18 months later. It was a girl Adam named Stella after a girl he found in a well during his military days. Stella's eyes reminded him of the stars in the sky as they removed her body from the well. The novels are concerned with the portrayal 'ordinary, decent folk', striving to 'get on' and become a success, whilst remaining true to themselves and their values. These values include patriotism, decency, integrity, thrift, industriousness, success gained through service and hard work. The novels, now described as 'old fashioned', celebrate English history, humanity, and liberalism while demonstrating little patience with entrenched class differences and snobbery. The University of Sydney (29 April 2005). "Citation: Doctor of Letters (honoris causa) - Emeritus Professor Donald Richmond Horne AO" (PDF) . Retrieved 20 April 2021.

Giles, the family scholar, meets his future fiancée as he is walking across the country after he graduates from boarding school. She turns out to be the daughter of a very wealthy industrialist, and though she loves Giles very much, and he loves her, she is vastly spoiled. So much so, that Giles, who is extremely sympathetic to the plight of the working person, finds himself obliged to break up with her shortly before they are due to be married. She promptly disappears, and he is never really the same after that until he finds her again, and discovers, to his surprise, that she has been spending her time finding out for herself what it is like to live like the working class.The Adventures of Ben Gunn (a companion novel to Stevenson's Treasure Island telling of events which occurred before that book begins) Whilst not quite up to the standard of To Serve Them All My Days, this is still well worth reading if you enjoy chunky, good quality period fiction. Confessions of a new boy. Ringwood, Victoria: Viking (published 1985). 1986. p.372. ISBN 978-0-14-008754-3. I feel like I'm always tempted to give R.F. Delderfield at least 4 stars because his stories are just so readable. Adam is a great character, and certainly deserved to have another, equally good character as his partner during this enjoyable saga, and the author has provided this in the shape of Henrietta, Daughter of a somewhat unscrupulous mill owner, a young woman with a mind of her own, whose character develops as the story unfolds.

This is such an interesting read....a little predictable at times, but also surprising and interesting.In this book, we get much more than the adventures of Adam and his wife, Henrietta. There are the ongoing incidents in the life of the various elements of “the network” – the regional departments of Swann-on-Wheels. And there is change in the company itself, as Adam transforms it from a single proprietorship to a closely-held company. And there is the drama of trying to groom his second son, George, to succeed him as head of the company. This includes the vagaries of George’s love life, which leads rather abruptly to his traveling to Europe to study the practices of other similar companies. And this, in turn, leads to George’s almost accidentally discovering his real love – a motorized vehicle.

It was his commitment to being led by the authentic voices and testaments of the past that so surprised critics of a former Communist party ideologue. Because not only was the biographical form somewhat at odds with the traditional Marxist focus on mass movements and socioeconomic tectonics, but religious impulses had usually been regarded as expressions of false consciousness when it came to historical motivation. Hill places religion front and centre in his account of the motivations of Cromwell and the shape of the English revolution. Indeed, he approvingly quotes Cromwell's own account of events: "Religion was not the thing at first contested for, but God brought it to that issue at last." After returning from the wars in the Crimea and India, Adam Swann decided to leave the army and started his own business - "Swann-on-Wheels". The company's name was suggested by Henrietta Rawlinson, daughter of a local mill owner, who will become his beloved wife. a b c d e f "Horne, Donald Richard". Muswellbrook Shire Hall of Fame. Muswellbrook Visitors Centre. 2005. Archived from the original on 25 April 2013 . Retrieved 14 June 2013. Yet, as for so many of his generation, his childhood spiritual faith was replaced by Marxist philosophy. By 1934, Hill had joined the Communist party and started to work with Soviet scholars in Moscow, who were then introducing a more materialist interpretation into English social and economic history. After the war, Hill, together with the likes of Eric Hobsbawm and Victor Kiernan, was a central figure in the Communist Party Historians Group, which was determined to abandon the history of "great men" for a more socially attuned, finely grained discipline drawing on lost voices and vernacular sources. (Hill left the Communist party in opposition to the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary, and what he regarded as the absence of any effective internal debate within the party.) Thia bestselling novel set in the ruthless world of Victorian commerce follows the fortunes of Adam Swann, scion of an Army family and veteran of campaigns in the Crimea and in India, in his quest to found his own financial dynasty. His struggle to succeed and his conquest of Henrietta, the spirited daughter of a rich manufacturer, drive a richly woven tale that takes the reader from the dusty plains of India to the teeming slums of nineteenth-century London, from the chaos of the great industrial cities of the age to the peaceful certainties of the English countryside.

Delderfield wrote The Adventures of Ben Gunn (1956) which follows Ben Gunn from sexton's son to pirate and is narrated by Jim Hawkins in Gunn's words. It describes the life of Ben Gunn from the events which led him to leave Devon, and eventually to his presence on Treasure Island and involvement in the story told by Stevenson, and follows up with a brief summary of Ben Gunn's life afterwards. Now I long for the church attendance, respect of the Bible, and gospel zeal of previous generations of my kinsmen according to the flesh. However, my forbearer’s apparent linking of “Englishness” and “Christianity” wasn’t just unbiblical but positively counter-biblical. Stella, married at 18 to an impotent aristocrat who tries to imprison her in his life of shame and disgrace.