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The Last September by Elizabeth Bowen "Brilliant.... A successful combination of social comedy and private tragedy."--The Times Literary Supplement Read an Excerpt Official Film Site View the trailer

About the Book

In 1920, at their country home in County Cork, Sir Richard Naylor and his wife, Lady Myra, and their friends maintain a skeptical attitude toward the events going on around them, but behind the facade of tennis parties and army camp dances, all know that the end is approaching--the end of British rule in the south of Ireland and the demise of a way of life that had survived for centuries. Their niece, Lois Farquar, attempts to live her own life and gain her own freedoms from the very class that her elders are vainly defending. THE LAST SEPTEMBER depicts the tensions between love and the longing for freedom, between tradition and the terrifying prospect of independence, both political and spiritual.

"[Elizabeth Bowen] is one of the handful of great...novelists of this century." --The Washington Post

About the Author

Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973), a central figure in London literary society, who counted among her friends Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene, is widely considered to be one of the most distinguished novelists of the modern era, combining psychological realism with an unparalleled gift for poetic impressionism. Born in Dublin in 1899, the only child of an Irish lawyer/landowner and his wife, Bowen spent her early summers on the family's estate in County Cork. Called Bowen's Court, the house and its land were the direct inspiration for the setting of Danielstown in The Last September.

About the Film

Now a major motion picture from Trimark Pictures, starring Maggie Smith and Michael Gambon.

OFFICIAL SELECTION 1999 CANNES & TORONTO FILM FESTIVALS

A timeless, psychological yet sensual drama, THE LAST SEPTEMBER depicts the tensions between the longing for love and the yearning for freedom, between long-standing tradition and radical social change, and the attractions and terrors of political, spiritual and even sexual emancipation. The story follows the end of an era, the demise of British rule in Ireland and, with it, the passing of an Anglo-Irish aristocracy (the wealthy heirs of English immigrants in Ireland, who sound and appear English, although they consider themselves Irish) that had survived for centuries. Based on Elizabeth Bowen's acclaimed novel, THE LAST SEPTEMBER is an unforgettable portrait of a young woman's coming of age in a brutalized time and place, where the ordinariness of life floats like music over the impending doom of history.

Starring Academy Award-winner Maggie Smith ("Tea with Mussolini") and Michael Gambon ("The Insider"), THE LAST SEPTEMBER marks the directorial debut of noted theatre and opera director Deborah Warner ("Titus Andronicus," "The Waste Land"). The film also features an all-star cast from British film and theatre, including Jane Birkin ("A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries"), Fiona Shaw ("The Butcher Boy"), Lambert Wilson ("Jefferson in Paris"), Keeley Hawes ("The Avengers"), David Tennant ("Jude the Obscure"), Gary Lydon ("Nothing Personal"), Richard Roxburgh ("Oscar and Lucinda"), Jonathan Slinger ("Spring Awakening") and Emily Nagle in her feature film debut.

Copyright © 1999, Random House, Inc
Photos Copyright © 1999, Universal Studios.