The eccentric Mortmain family have been rattling around in a vast, decrepit castle for years, gradually slipping into financial ruin. Mortmain is crippled by writer's block, while his second wife Topaz - a fading beauty - struggles to be a dutiful stepmother to Rose, Cassandra and Thomas. Rose needs a husband, Thomas an education but Cassandra lives for her writing. Through her gloriously witty and shrewd diaries, she chronicles the trials of family life, the impact on their prospects of the arrival of a glamorous American family and the agonies of falling in love for the first time.
Illustrated by Ruth Steed, with an Afterword by Anna South.
There are 448 pages in this book. This book was published 2014 by Pan Macmillan .
Dodie Smith was born in 1896. She made her name as a playwright before moving to the US in the 1940s where she began writing novels including I Capture the Castle in 1948 and her best-known work, The Hundred and One Dalmatians, in 1956.
This book contains the following story:
I Capture the Castle
This is the diary of Cassandra Mortmain, which tells of her extraordinary family and their crumbling castle home. Cassandra's father was once a famous writer, but now he mainly reads detective novels while his family slide into genteel poverty. Her sister Rose is bored and beautiful, and desperate to marry riches. Their step-mother Topaz has habit of striding through the countryside wearing only her wellington boots. But all their lives will be soon be transformed by the arrival of new neighbours from America, and Cassandra finds herself falling in love...
