1914, a long hot summer. THE LAST SUMMER is a sweepingly epic and gloriously intimate commercial debut - a beautiful and haunting story of lost innocence and a powerful, enduring love. Clarissa is almost seventeen when the spell of her childhood is broken.It is 1914, the beginning of a blissful, golden summer - and the end of an era.Deyning Park is in its heyday, the large country house filled with the laughter and excitement of privileged youth preparing for a weekend party.When Clarissa meets Tom Cuthbert, home from university and staying with his mother, the housekeeper, she is dazzled.Tom is handsome and enigmatic; he is also an outsider.Ambitious, clever, his sights set on a career in law, Tom is an acute observer, and a man who knows what he wants.For now, that is Clarissa. As Tom and Clarissa's friendship deepens, the wider landscape of political life around them is changing, and another story unfolds: they are not the only people in love.Soon the world - and all that they know - is rocked by a war that changes their lives for ever.