The Golden Virgin

A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight #6

by Henry Williamson

The Golden Virgin (1957) was the sixth entry in Henry Williamson's fifteen-volume A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight spanning the years from the late Victorian period to the Second World War. Its action unfolds in 1916, the year of the Somme. As war destroys the countryside Phillip Maddison loves, turning it into an inferno of mud and terror, the damaged figure of the Mother of God with her Babe on a ruined church inspires the legend that war will end only when she, the Golden Virgin, topples into the ruins below. Invalided home once again Phillip re-crosses the narrow waters of the Channel to find life continuing as before, albeit with an ever-widening gulf between those at home and those who have 'returned.'


'Williamson's style is romantic, though rarely sentimental, and his sensuous response to nature is fresh and surprising.' Anthony Burgess, Ninety-Nine Novels: The Best in English since 1939

448 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1957

About the author

Henry William Williamson was an English soldier, naturalist, farmer and ruralist writer known for his natural history and social history novels, as well as for his fascist sympathies. He won the Hawthornden Prize for literature in 1928 with his book Tarka the Otter.

Henry Williamson is best known for a tetralogy of four novels which consists of The Beautiful Years (1921), Dandelion Days (1922), The Dream of Fair Women (1924) and The Pathway (1928). These novels are collectively known as The Flax of Dream and they follow the life of Willie Maddison from boyhood to adulthood in a rapidly changing world.

Reviews

[Paul Christensen · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the horrors of the Somme
To the terror of a Zeppelin raid,
The author crafts with aplomb
The myriad gleams of the world he has made;

From a deeper concern with the Occident
To more intricate strivings of love,
Phillip is finding more confidence;
He is growing, and rising above.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think that Williamson's descriptions and dialogue are unsurpassed in Twentieth Century English literature, and that his neglect is due to his mistaken political outlook in the 1930s. I also think that the WWI novels in his Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight series seem to be a real description of a soldier's experiences and feelings during that conflict. His desire to return to the front from home leave resembles that of Paul in All Quiet on the Western Front. I recommend Williamson's books to anyone wishing to read about middle class life in London and Southern England in the first half of the Twentieth Century.

[PAUL DEWSON · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another excellent read in the wonderful chronicles of ancient sunlight series. Here we follow the young Phillip Maddison into the carnage of the first day of the battle of the somme. Returning home to convalescence after being wounded we begin to notice a change in his character forged in the heat of battle. All told with Williamson's unerring eye for character and the natural world around them.