Impossible Things

Zanna Gringrich is so exotic and vividly beautiful that she seems to make the world spin faster. Her armoury consists of lavender eyes, marmalade hair, and 'a Ritz mind'. With her beauty comes irreverence and defiance- on the road to becoming a famous society milliner, she doesn't hesitate to hail her discovery of a new shade of navy blue as though it were a cure for cancer - or so her neglected daughter, Aurora, claims. As the post-war years of austerity give way to boom, Zanna furnishes her Bond Street salon with silk sofas and ceramic tigers and gives her sublime hats names like 'Giddy Heaven' and 'Song for the Head'. Lacking any sense of guilt, Zanna blithely cheats on Jewish family life in Golders Green for the sake of her larger-than-life politician lover. As well as offering stolen Soho afternoons, this liaison brings her slap-bang against socialist ideals. So Zanna Gringrich does her bit towards equality of opportunity by designing a department-store range of millinery that allows typists to dress like debutantes. In the meantime, her love affair forces her into a fatal connection with the stately Shropshire pile of Utley Manor. Here, the same winds of change that