Told with wit and pace, Martin Boyd's The Montforts follows five generations of the Montfort family, members of Australia's 'colonial aristocracy' as they navigate - and become part of - a new world.The novel's concerns—the complex relationships between patriotism and civilisation, art and religion, the individual and his past, love and romance—are timeless.First published under the pen name Martin Mills in 1928 with the title The Madeleine Heritage, The Montforts won the ALS Gold Medal in 1928. This edition was revised by the author and published in 1963. It includes an introduction from Brenda Niall, author of his biography, Martin Boyd: A Life (1988).Martin Boyd's other highly acclaimed novels include Lucinda Brayford (1946) and The Cardboard Crown (1952).

Our minds are like those maps at the entrance to the Metro stations in Paris. They are full of unilluminated directions. But when we know where we want to go and press the right button, the route is illuminated before us in electric clarity.Diana von Flugel warned her husband: a piece of toast that hard could break a tooth. When Diana goes to Melbourne to have the tooth fixed, Wolfie is far too concerned with finding inspiration for his musical compositions to realise the chain of events he has just set in motion. On Collins Street, Russell Lockwood catches a glimpse of his childhood friend and knows at once that she is a rare woman...Now Diana and Wolfie's marriage is under threat, the Great War is approaching, and no one quite knows where their hearts belong. First published in 1957, the third novel in Martin Boyd's celebrated Langton Quartet is a beguiling comedy of manners about the outbreak of love in inconvenient places.This edition of...

The last novel in Martin Boyd's celebrated Langton Quartet, which includes The Cardboard Crown, A Difficult Young Man and Outbreak of Love.At the outbreak of World War I, Dominic Langton leaves his wife on a remote sheep farm in New South Wales to enlist in the British Army. What he experiences in the trenches changes him forever; his return home sees him cast off his past and find his own integrity. He has seen the true nature of war - the senseless waste of life, the millions of young men condemned to pointless slaughter - and has emerged a wiser, but troubled, man.When Blackbirds Sing is a masterful recreation of the vanished world of 1914, and a moving and powerful testament to the devastation of war. In this final instalment of Martin Boyd's celebrated Langton Quartet, Boyd confirms his reputation as one of the most outstanding novelists Australia has ever produced.Martin a' Beckett Boyd was born in Switzerland in...

Winner, Australian Literature Society Gold Medal in 1956. Introduction by Sonya Hartnett."Nearly everyone between the ages of eighteen and thirty turns against his family and wants to escape from it. When he is sixty he wants to creep back to the nursery fireside, but it is no longer there."Handsome, proud, reprehensible, misunderstood. Dominic Langton is the dark heart of A Difficult Young Man. His brother Guy can scarcely understand where he fits into the pattern of things or what he might do next. Martin Boyd's much loved novel is an elegant, witty and compelling family tale about the contradictions of growing up.

Set in Australia and England in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, The Cardboard Crown presents an unforgettable portrait of an upper middle-class family who love both countries but are not quite at home in either.At the centre of this scintillating and immensely readable novel is Alice Verso, whose unexpected marriage to Austin Langton not only brings financial stability to the Langtons but founds an Anglo-Australian dynasty. But when her grandson finds her diaries and begins to uncover her story he chances on an intricate web of deception and reveals the complex fate of his family over three generations. This remarkable novel, first published to a chorus of acclaim in 1952, is one of the lost classics of Australian literature. Martin Boyd is a deeply humane novelist, a writer of family sagas without peer. This edition features an introduction by one of Australia's best-known and award-winning biographers, Brenda Niall.?...