Are We Besieged. London: Peter Davies, 1946. First Edition. Pp, 320. Green cloth boards, in pictorial dust jacket. Jacket lightly chipped at tail of spine, neat ownership name to front free endpaper, otherwise a nice bright copy.

The author’s first novel (now largely forgotten) is set in 1920s Ireland, in a house in Fitzwilliam Square in Dublin, where their relatives, the Adairs, try to deal with the new Ireland in their different ways.

Barbara Fitzgerald was married to Peter Somerville, Edith Somerville’s nephew (Edith of Somerville and Ross fame). Peter’s father was Vice-Admiral Boyle Somerville, whom the IRA murdered in 1937.