'Her books are utterly delightful' – Daily Mail

'Radiant and comforting' – The TLS

Award-winner Eva Ibbotson's The Secret Countess, author of The Morning Gift, is a classic historical romance that stretches across countries, families and class divides.

After revolution tears her country apart, young Russian countess Anna Grazinsky is forced to flee Saint Petersburg for rural England, where her now penniless family has no choice but to rely on the kindness of their only friend, Anna's old governess. Determined to help her family in any way possible, Anna arms herself with an out-of-date book on housekeeping and takes work as a servant at a crumbling mansion in the English countryside.

1919 sees Rupert, the handsome young Earl of Westerholme, return from war and become instantly mesmerized by Anna. As powerful attraction clashes with tradition, Anna finds concealing her true identity increasingly impossible.

Elegantly written, witty and well-observed -- Nigella Lawson * The Sunday Times *
Sheer bliss from start to finish * Daily Mail *
So full of goodness, generosity and romance! I loved The Secret Countess -- Jessie Burton * Good Housekeeping *
Radiant and comforting * The TLS *

My comfort reads
Eva Ibbotson’s The Morning Gift or The Secret Countess. Such an interesting writer: an Austrian refugee who came to the UK in the 1930s. Both novels are about displaced people in a time of war but written with such a lightness of touch and extraordinary charm that they always change my mood to hopeful. Absolute balm.

Eva Ibbotson was born in Vienna in 1925 and fled to England with her family when the Nazis came to power. She became a writer while bringing up her four children in Newcastle. Her bestselling novels have been published and loved by readers around the world.

Her novels for adults, all rich historical romances, convey her deep love of the arts, the Austrian countryside, and the importance of belonging.

In 2001, her children's novel Journey to the River Sea won the Nestle Gold Award and was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal, the Whitbread Children's Book of the Year and the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize.

Eva passed away peacefully in October 2010 at the age of eighty-five.