For years past I had regarded a general war in Europe as an eventual certainty. The experience which I gained during the seven or eight years spent as a member of the Committee of Imperial Defence, and my three years tenure of the Office of Chief of the General Staff, greatly strengthened this conviction. For reasons which it is unnecessary to enter upon, I resigned my position as Chief of the Staff in April, 1914, and from that time I temporarily lost touch with the European situation as ...

Set on the Channel Island of Sark, the novel tells the story of Carette, a young woman who lives on the island. Carette is depicted as a spirited and independent character who longs for adventure and freedom beyond the confines of her island home.As the narrative unfolds, Carette finds herself torn between her love for her homeland and her desire to explore the wider world. The novel explores themes of love, duty, loyalty, and the search for personal fulfillment.Against the backdrop of the...

The story is set on the fictional island of Carne, an isolated and rugged place that holds many secrets and dangers. The "coil" in the title metaphorically represents the tangled and complex series of events that unfold on the island, drawing the characters into a web of mystery, intrigue, and adventure.The protagonist, often a strong and determined figure typical of Oxenham's novels, finds himself embroiled in a conflict involving hidden treasures, old rivalries, and dark secrets that hav...

For those who were chiefly in my heart when these verses came to me from time to time—our men and boys at the Front, and those they leave behind them in grievous sorrow and anxiety at home—my little message is that, so far as they are concerned—"ALL'S WELL!" Those who have so nobly responded to the Call, and those who, with quiet faces and breaking hearts, have so bravely bidden them "God speed!"—with these, All is truly Well, for they are equally giving their best to what, in this case, w...

To give you a clear understanding of matters I must begin at the beginning and set things down in their proper order, though, as you will see, that was not by any means the way in which I myself came to learn them. For my mother and my grandfather were not given to overmuch talk at the best of times, and all my boyish questionings concerning my father left me only the bare knowledge that, like many another Island man in those times—ay, and in all times—he had gone down to the sea and had n...

A girl and a boy lay in a cubby-hole in the north side of the cliff overlooking Port Gorey, and watched the goings-on down below. The sun was tending towards Guernsey and the gulf was filled witn golden light. A small brig, unkempt and dirty, was nosing towards the rough wooden landing-stage clamped to the opposite rocks, as though doubtful of the advisability of attempting its closer acquaintance. "Mon Gyu, Bern, how I wish they were all at the bottom of the sea!" said the girl vehemently...

As the world plunges into conflict, the characters grapple with fear, uncertainty, and the moral complexities of war. Some enlist eagerly, motivated by a sense of duty and patriotism, while others are reluctant conscripts, forced to leave behind their loved ones and confront the horrors of battle."1914" offers a poignant and thought-provoking exploration of the human cost of war, as well as the resilience, courage, and camaraderie that emerge in the face of adversity. Oxenham's vivid descr...

She was so dainty a little figure that the bare-armed women in the doors of the lands and closes turned and looked after her with enjoyment untinged even with envy. They scratched their elbows and commented on her points with complacent understanding.

If by any chance you should ever sail on a low ebb-tide along a certain western coast, you will, if you are of a receptive humour and new to the district, receive a somewhat startling impression of the dignity of the absolutely flat. Your ideas of militant and resistant grandeur may have been associated hitherto with the iron frontlets and crashing thunders of Finisterre or Sark, of Cornwall or the Western Isle. Here you are faced with a repressive curbing of the waters, equal in every res...

John Oxenham's Hearts in Exile is a romantic and moral novel shaped by the emotional earnestness of early twentieth-century popular fiction. The book explores estrangement, inward suffering, and the longing for spiritual and emotional homecoming, tracing characters whose lives are marked by loss, duty, and the hope of renewal. Oxenham writes in a graceful, accessible prose style, blending sentiment with ethical reflection; the novel stands within a tradition of English domestic fiction tha...

What if everything you thought you knew about the most pivotal years in human history had been left deliberately, achingly blank? John Oxenham's The Hidden Years dares to step into the silence that has captivated seekers, scholars, and dreamers for centuries, bringing to vivid and reverent life the unrecorded youth of Jesus of Nazareth. Set against the sun-baked landscapes of ancient Galilee, this extraordinary novel imagines the formative decades that shaped a young carpenter into the fig...

War is that most awful and heinous display of man’s inhumanity.And within the legions of slaughtered young men in the trenches of Western Europe, or the desperate carnage of battles fought elsewhere, were a group of men we now call the War Poets. Names such as Owen, Thomas, Brooke for example may still have a legacy that so eloquently describes the suffering, brutality and the waste of the human body and spirit, but so many others have left their words on a page and sunk to forgott...