Donald Sempill has a beautiful wife who adores him, five perfect daughters and enough money that he doesn't have to work. In fact he can afford to buy a ruin in Argyllshire and restore it as a home for them all – Poverty Castle. The idyll can't last, though. Try as hard they might obsession and the outside world begin to creep into the Sempills' Eden and the stability and idealism they had worked so hard for is threatened.
Poverty Castle is an absorbing work of contrasts and subtle irony centred around an idealistic family in Argyll. A compelling novel, it deals with human nature, as always with Jenkins, and the socialism of industrial Glasgow.
