The Tortoise And The Hare (Virago Modern Classics) [Paperback]

My best book of almost all time is THE TORTOISE AND THE HARE by Elizabeth Jenkins ... wonderfully sinister, so enchantingly written and so sad. Everyone should read it Jilly Cooper As smooth and seductive as a bowl of cream Hilary Mantel One of my favourite classics. Elegant and ironic, its continuing charm lies in its quirky and enigmatic love story which becomes more beguiling with each re-reading Carmen Callil Deliciously subtle...A lost world of tweeds and twin-sets...a classic novel of the fifties DAILY MAIL

My best book of almost all time is THE TORTOISE AND THE HARE by Elizabeth Jenkins ... wonderfully sinister, so enchantingly written and so sad. Everyone should read it (Jilly Cooper )

As smooth and seductive as a bowl of cream (Hilary Mantel )

One of my favourite classics. Elegant and ironic, its continuing charm lies in its quirky and enigmatic love story which becomes more beguiling with each re-reading (Carmen Callil )

Deliciously subtle...A lost world of tweeds and twin-sets...a classic novel of the fifties (DAILY MAIL )

* This exquisite novel tells a love story with a difference.

* 'One of my favourite classics' Carmen Callil

In affairs of the heart the race is not necessarily won by the swift or the fair.

Imogen, the beautiful and much younger wife of distinguished barrister Evelyn Gresham, is facing the greatest challenge of her married life. Their neighbour Blanche Silcox, competent, middle-aged and ungainly - the very opposite of Imogen - seems to be vying for Evelyn's attention. And to Imogen's increasing disbelief, she may be succeeding.

'A subtle and beautiful book ... Very few authors combine her acute psychological insight with her grace and style. There is plenty of life in the modern novel, plenty of authors who will shock and amaze you - but who will put on the page a beautiful sentence, a sentence you will want to read twice?' Hilary Mantel, Sunday Times

Elizabeth Jenkins, the distinguished biographer (of Jane Austen, Lady Caroline Lamb and Elizabeth I), historian and novelist, lives in Hampstead, London; she was awarded the OBE in 1981. THE TORTOISE AND THE HARE, her sixth novel, was first published in 1953, and is generally considered her greatest work of fiction.