''One of the great British novels of the twentieth century: a narrative of extraordinary reach, power and beauty'' Sarah WatersThe nuns who enter a medieval Norfolk convent are told to renounce the world, but the world still finds ways to trouble them, whether it is through fire, floods, pestilence, a collapsing spire, jealous rivalries, a priest with a secret or a plague of caterpillars. As we follow their daily lives over three centuries, this masterpiece of historical fiction re-creates a world run by women.''As an act of imagined history this novel has few rivals. Also, as it happens, a work of high, frequent comedy'' George Steiner, The Times Literary Supplement''Spellbinding . . . One starts rereading as soon as one has reached the last page'' Sunday Times''Magnificent'' Philip Hensher, Daily Telegraph

''A great shout of life and individuality ... an act of defiance that gladdens the soul'' Guardian Lolly Willowes, so gentle and accommodating, has depths no one suspects. When she suddenly announces that she is leaving London and moving, alone, to the depths of the countryside, her overbearing relatives are horrified. But Lolly has a greater, far darker calling than family: witchcraft. ''The book I''ll be pressing into people''s hands forever . . . It tells the story of a woman who rejects the life that society has fixed for her in favour of freedom ... tips suddenly into extraordinary, lucid wildness'' Helen Macdonald''Witty, eerie, tender ... her prose, in its simple, abrupt evocations, has something preternatural about it'' John Updike