Sir Humphrey of Batch Hall

Welcome to Batch Magna, a place where anything might happen. And often does… The newly married Sir Humphrey of Batch Hall and his wife look to their future
a future which is threatening to be short-lived. Their finances rest, shakily, on the estate’s shooting and fishing, stepping stones to that more secure future. But they come to have cause to hope that they will get there.

Until the day a cold wind from the world beyond the hills of their valley visits Batch Magna in the shape of badger baiters discovered in Cutterbach Wood. They are routed, but their defeat entails such disaster that Humphrey and his new wife are driven to the wall, left with no way out but to sell the estate, to sell their future in that place. And then Miss Wyndham, village spinster and amateur sleuth, rides to the rescue on the 49 bus… AUTHOR: Peter Maughan’s early career covered many trades, working on building sites, in wholesale markets, on fairground rides and in a circus. Later he travelled the West Country, picking fruit, and sleeping wherever he could, before moving on to wherever the next road took him. After travelling to Jersey to pick potatoes, he found work in a film studio in its capital, walk-ons and bit parts in the pilot films that were made there, and as a contributing script writer. He studied at the Actor’s Workshop in London, and worked as an actor in the UK and Ireland, subsequently founding a fringe theatre in Barnes, London, and living on a converted sailing barge among a small colony of houseboats on the River Medway. His idyllic, heedless years by the river, inspired him to write the Batch Magna novels, set in a peaceful river valley in the Welsh Marches. He is married and lives currently in Wales.