The English statesman John Pym (1584-1643) led the House of Commons in the opening years of the English civil war. John Pym was the son of a lesser landowner of Somerset. When he was a boy, Pym's views on religion were molded by his stepfather, Sir...

Leading 'wet' in Thatcher's first cabinet who became Foreign Secretary during the Falklands War During the four years of Margaret Thatcher's first government Francis Pym had the distinction of holding three different posts. It was his misfortune that she found him intensely irritating...

BARBARA PYM's novels have attracted many loyal readers since they began to appeal in the early 1950s. Her bittersweet comedies of manners chronicle the ordinary pleasures and frustrations of educated, middle-class women and men. Invariably they are citizens of close-knit communities: English villages...