My Name is Matilda - Hardcover

The year is 1827, and an uneducated but enterprising young Devon farm girl starts selling her strawberries and home-made clotted cream at the local market. She is befriended by an upper-class young lady, Hannah Hill, who becomes a regular customer. Unexpectedly, this friendship leads to Hannah's wealthy parents offering Matilda the chance to become their somewhat inept daughter's companion and chaperone. From there, and her meeting with Hannah's brother, the new young rector of Timsbury, Matilda's life changes for ever. This charming fact-based story, set in the southwest of England during the nineteenth century, has been written by Matilda White's great-great-grandson, a New Zealand resident who stayed in Devon for four months to thoroughly research his ancestor's fascinating life. Matilda's achievements-substantial for one so humbly born-as well as her sacrifices are described in loving detail in a tale filled with scandal and social expectations, happiness and tragedy. Yet this is the story not only of Matilda-her friends and family, ranging from down-to-earth rustic folk to upper-crust aristrocrats, are portrayed with the same care. It's a book you'll find engrossing from start to finish!

David White, whose father emigrated from England in 1937, was born in Pahiatua, New Zealand, in 1944. On leaving school, he applied to join the air force, but instead took a job with a bookstore company. Becoming hooked on the book trade, in the early 1970s he joined Hodder and Stoughton as their Wellington sales rep, paving the way for meetings with many celebrity writers, who fed his own love of writing. In the mid-1980s he began working for the London Bookshop chain and three years later was transferred to Auckland, where he opened his own bookshop. Now retired, he and his wife currently live in Matamata. Though he still drives a milk tanker for nine months of the year, the couple have a passion for travelling, and also breed race horses. In his spare time he drives a school bus and carves wooden rocking horses.