Folly - Softcover

For three generations the family-run auction houses of the Ballantynes and the Kings have been fierce rivals. The grandparents Henry Ballantyne and Richard King were once best friends, despite their different backgrounds but then they fell for the same girl, Eleanor Faraday. Eleanor eventually picked Henry and the seeds were sown for a bitter feud that flourished between the two clans for over six decades. But as both firms prepare to celebrate their half century, two of the grandchildren, Jamie Ballantyne and Artemis King, decide it's time to bury the hatchet and arrange a shared party for both families. Things don't go according to plan though and revelations at the party rock the foundations of both families, as a web of deceit and intrigue, forgery and fraud are ruinously exposed. Jamie and Artemis uncover secrets that were better left undisturbed, but their discovery brings them closer together and they find themselves falling in love. Will their love be strong enough to survive the scandal they have unwittingly revealed?

Alan Titchmarsh is known to millions through the popular BBC TV programmes The Nature of Britain, British Isles: A Natural History, How to be a Gardener, Ground Force and Gardeners World. He has written more than forty gardening books, as well as six best-selling novels and his two memoirs Trowel and Error: notes from life on earth and Nobbut a Lad. He was made MBE in the millennium New Year Honours List and holds a Victoria Medal of Honour, the Royal Horticultural Society's highest award. He lives with his wife and a menagerie of animals in Hampshire where he gardens organically.