Rory Clark

A Manor Of Speaking: Frampton Hall Rory Clark

One of England's largest historic landed estates is to be sold. Thousands of acres of farmland, hundreds of cottages and priceless paintings and treasures from within the stately home are up for sale.
James Aden, in his mid-thirties, is the land agent for the late Sir Charles Buckley, eighth baronet, and his son, Sir Sebastian, ninth baronet, who owns the breath-taking Frampton Hall Estate in Suffolk.
When Sebastian and Serena, his beautiful wife, learn they are unable to have children they see no point in keeping their inherited estate. So they set up a charity to benefit from the assets. Nonetheless, this conflicts with the family trustees who were selected by Sir Charles to ensure its posterity.
Tony Stoke, the only serious potential buyer, made his fortune manufacturing lavatory paper. His father had been a bus driver for London Transport and the family's social class is world's away from the upper-class Buckleys.
James is tasked with masterminding the sale while continuing the daily management of the extraordinary array of tenants in the estate's cottages and farms in the absence of any interest from Sebastian.
Will the sale proceed? Will Tony Stoke become Lord of the Manor and pursue a gracious aristocratic lifestyle?
Or will the estate dwellers, the art industry experts, and the trustees put a stop to this madness before it begins?
Find out this and so much more in this humorous tale which depicts an aristocratic, eccentric lifestyle not dissimilar to PG Wodehouse's characters of a bygone age.