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A Month in the Country
  • Published: 3 November 2026
  • ISBN: 9780241820223
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 144
  • RRP: $37.00

A Month in the Country

Formats & editions
Paperback
22 Aug 2000
Hardback
3 Nov 2026
EBook
3 Oct 2013
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J. L. Carr's beautiful portrayal of the countryside and the healing it brings, in an irresistible Little Clothbound Classics edition designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith

A damaged survivor of the First World War, Tom Birkin finds refuge in the quiet village church of Oxgodby where he is to spend the summer uncovering a huge medieval wall-painting. Immersed in the peace and beauty of the countryside and the unchanging rhythms of village life he experiences a sense of renewal and belief in the future. Now an old man, Birkin looks back on the idyllic summer of 1920, remembering a vanished place of blissful calm, untouched by change, a precious moment he has carried with him through the disappointments of the years.

Adapted into a 1987 film starring Colin Firth, Natasha Richardson and Kenneth Branagh, A Month in the Country traces the slow revival of the primeval rhythms of life so cruelly disorientated by the Great War.
  • Published: 3 November 2026
  • ISBN: 9780241820223
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 144
  • RRP: $37.00
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Praise for A Month in the Country

The book I keep coming back to, it's one of the best books I've ever read. I've never met anyone who didn't love it

Richard Osman

I wanted to write A Month in the Country in space - a brief, lovely homage to the natural world, pastoral writing about how deeply humans respond to our natural environments and the relationship between beauty and survival. In the end (I guess inevitably) the two books bore very little resemblance, but I don't think Orbital would exist without it

Samantha Harvey, author of Orbital

The book I keep coming back to, it's one of the best books I've ever read. I've never met anyone who didn't love it

Richard Osman

I wanted to write A Month in the Country in space - a brief, lovely homage to the natural world, pastoral writing about how deeply humans respond to our natural environments and the relationship between beauty and survival. In the end (I guess inevitably) the two books bore very little resemblance, but I don't think Orbital would exist without it

Samantha Harvey, author of Orbital

Unlike anything else in modern English Literature

D.J. Taylor, Spectator