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The story of Mary Knighton is played out in the rural backwater of North Bedfordshire and describes the lives and often harsh existence of the yeoman stock from which she comes. It starts in 1898 as she is ending her schooldays and contrasts the rural idyll with the isolation and cruelty that country life can bring.
Mary is headstrong, passionate and alluring, but after a promising start to a career in fashion, circumstances conspire against her and she is eventually forced into a hapless marriage. How she copes and overcomes her misfortune is compellingly told and her relationships with others develop as the story unwinds.
About the author
Richard Brown was born in 1943 the second of four children of a farming family in the west of the old rural county of Huntingdonshire. After education at Kimbolton School, he graduated with a degree in Agriculture from Wye College, London University, in 1966. Within a few years of returning from university he was running the farm, a job he did until retirement, which then gave more time for other pursuits.
He started writing at the age of 65 and, after producing several versions of a semi-autobiographical work, commenced Mary Knighton in November 2009. On completion of this epic story he returned to the semi-autobiographical theme and has produced a quartet of shorter pieces; Thisbie, Long Stop, Postman's Knock and Feeding the Pigs. Of these Thisbie and Postman's Knock are complete but the other two are work in progress. They all have a rural theme as in Mary Knighton.
