Princes in the Land has the same theme as Persephone Book No 41, Hostages to Fortune, a great Persephone favourite: both are about a woman bringing up a family who is left at the end, when the children are on the verge of adulthood, asking herself not only what it was all for but what was her own life for? Yet, the questions are asked subtly and readably. As The Times Literary Supplement wrote in 1938: ?Although Miss Cannan's new book raises many questions she puts none of them herself; they grow inevitably out of her story and answer themselves.'Patricia Crispin, the fatherless grandchild of Lord Waveney, is brought up with her pretty sister and her whining mother who rather deplores her plainness and lack of gentility. But the old Baron adores her, teaches her to ride and take her fences cleanly, and intends to make her wealthy at his death. He dies accidentally just as her engagement to a young, dour Scots professor is announced and Patricia is not wealthy at all. She has fallen in love with Hugh because he had seemed to answer when she spoke, and she finds life with him in a Glasgow villa on a small income very difficult.?Three children are born, exacting from their mother the sacrifices and services inseparable from motherhood on a small income, but Patricia takes many fences gallantly and even stands smilingly the nagging and whining of Hugh, who has developed an inferiority complex towards her. An appointment to a professorship at Oxford cures his complex and changes him into a genial, vague and kindly scholar; Patricia is very happy in the old farmhouse they have bought on Cumnor Hill, where she can teach the children country ways and indulge her longing for a horse. August, the oldest boy, is destined for Sandhurst, a very unsubtle boy, friendly, devoted to his mother, passionately in love with country things that are her life. Giles, kindly, rather cleverer than August, and Nicola the schoolgirl make up the family party, which seems ideally happy. Then comes catastrophe??Having shown us how everything is made bearable for Patricia if her children can be at the centre of her life and, more important (because she is not a selfish woman) if they grow up to fulfil her ideals, Joanna Cannan proceeds to show us her happiness being slowly destroyed. In Princes in the Land the tragedy of the book is that not only do none of the three children live up to their mother?s expectations, she has to watch as each of them takes a path that is anathema to her. Yet of course, she can do nothing about it; nor, sensibly, does she try. All in all, Princes in the Land focuses on an interesting and rarely-discussed theme;.Joanna Cannan ?lived enthusiastically? and wrote novels that were ?witty, satirical, even cynical. She presented clashes between idealists and materialists, with no easy solutions? writes the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography ; this is the book of hers with a thematic bite that readers will find hard to forget.