by Ruth Thomas
Acknowledgements
Thank you to the Scottish Arts Council for a bursary which helped me begin this novel.
I owe a great deal of thanks to my husband Mike Norman for his support, technical and emotional, over the years, and to my parents Liz and Eric Thomas for their encouragement always; also to many friends for keeping me cheerful, in particular Jennie Renton, Cherise Saywell, Elizabeth Ezra, Sonja Henrici, Margaret Burnett, Kirsteen Davidson-Kelly, Anne Hay, Jane McKie, Steve Renals and Jane Rourke, Alice Taylor, the ‘Clambers Mothers’ and my sister Ann Jones. The support and insight of Hannah Griffiths and the rest of the team at Faber and Deborah Rogers and Hannah Westland at Rogers, Coleridge and White have been wonderful, as has the encouragement of Halla Beloff, Shena Mackay, Cynthia Rogerson, Marion Sinclair, Sue Wilson, David Jackson Young and the Digger’s Writers. I would like to thank the memory of the late Sandie Craigie, a wonderful writer and friend.
Thank you to the Coats Sewing Group and David & Charles, publishers of The Anchor Books of Embroidery Stitches; to Sharon B’s Dictionary of Stitches for Embroidery; to www.bayeuxtapestry.org; and to Alain Erlande-Brandenburg, editor of the guide to the Musée Nationale du Moyen Age, Thermes de Cluny (Paris). Thanks again to Elizabeth Ezra for the French translations, and to Lucie Ewin for the proofreading.
All my love to M.G.N., C.M.N., G.B.N. and A.W.N.
About the Author
Ruth Thomas is a novelist and short-story writer. Her first story collection was shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys and the Saltire Society First Book Awards, and her second received a Scottish Arts Council Book Award. Her first novel Things to Make and Mend received a Good Housekeeping Book Award. The Home Corner is her second novel. Ruth was born in Kent and now lives in Edinburgh with her husband and three children. She is currently a Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Glasgow.
Copyright
First published in 2007
by Faber and Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA
This ebook edition first published in 2012
All rights reserved
© Ruth Thomas, 2007
The right of Ruth Thomas to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–0–571–29962–1