Vintage reading

I had fun this week avoiding the rain and reading a more romantic version of To Serve Them All My Days - in the form of a Hutchinson romance. Elizabeth Carfrae's The Dividing Line is the story of a forward-thinking headmaster who inherits enough money to purchase his old prep school and set himself up in his dream job. With a meander around wealthy relatives, new and old friends, devoted school secretaries in serviceable wool and even more devoted matrons crackling with starch, this one's actually (very silly) and enjoyably readable. There's even a madness from monomania and overwork subplot with a sleepwalking schoolboy. I'd say it's Girls Own-ish fairytale - popular stalwart of the genre. Was it even possible in the 1950s to buy a small Van Gogh by selling an old family jewel? Wishing territory, I suspect.