The Loving Cup: A Novel of Cornwall 1813-1815

1984's The Loving Cup, a novel released almost exactly forty years after the Poldark saga began, marks the tenth occasion Winston Graham visits Cornwall with his cast of characters. In this novel we witness Britain's reaction as the seemingly eternal war with France grinds down to what appears to be victory, and as a consequence Geoffrey Charles comes home at last from the front with a Spanish bride in tow. He takes up living in the old house he remembers from his childhood, when his father and mother, Francis and Elizabeth Poldark, resided there together in the far happier times of the 1780's and 1790's. But while this one homecoming passes, another Poldark takes a commission and goes to the perilous front, as the lovelorn Jeremy, at last accepting that the woman he'd hoped to marry will never have him in the face of her family's opposition, leaves behind all he has ever known and seeks his fate elsewhere. The Loving Cup is a novel about war, the results of an act of crime, and about the power of the place one dubs one's home. It tells tales of love and heartbreak, of ambitions successfully attained, and plans dashed by the whim of fate. In this book old friends from this long series are given exposure and updated, and many familiar men and women carry on with lives that seem very real beyond this literary context. As with all of Winston Graham's novels, this is historical fiction at its highest caliber.