A novel by L. P. Hartley, published in 1953. Leo Colston, an elderly man who has never married, discovers a diary he kept as a schoolboy which recalls a long-ago summer that he has subconsciously blocked from his memory. In 1900, Leo was invited to spend the summer with his schoolfriend Marcus Maudsley and his family at Brandham Hall the grand Norfolk house they lease from Hugh, Viscount Trimingham, a genial aristocratic war hero with a disfigured face. The socially-ambitious Mrs Maudsley has arranged a marriage between Trimingham and her daughter Marian.