Guest review by Jude Hayland: THE OLD WIVES' TALE by Arnold Bennett

 

"A masterpiece that has long been overlooked as Bennett appears to have slipped out of bookish fashion."

Initially a short story writer for women’s magazines, Jude Hayland was published extensively both in the UK and internationally for many years. After completing an M.A. with distinction in Creative and Critical Writing, she switched to writing full length fiction and has now written four novels with a fifth close to completion. Her genre is best described as book group fiction, concerned with the complexities of families and relationships, although her fifth is something of a departure with a setting in London during WW2. She also blogs on all matters writerly, runs creative writing workshops and particularly enjoys sharing her near lifelong reading and writing experiences through talks to U3a and similar groups.

No wonder Arnold Bennett despised the literati of his day and avoided their company - a victim of their snobbery and Virginia Woolf’s outright mockery of his writing, he remained disdainful his whole life of the elitism he found amongst his contemporaries.

Yet he was extremely successful financially and extraordinarily prolific. Between 1892 and 1931, he wrote 34 novels, endless articles and reviews, short stories, plays and wrote a daily journal. He also spent some years as an editor at Woman Magazine which, he claimed, helped him to learn a great deal about the secret nature of women as well as about ‘frocks and household management.’

I agree with him. Bennett’s ability to explore the emotions and complexities of his female characters, to portray them with acute sensitivity and insight is, for me, one of the highlights of his novels.

The Old Wives’ Tale was published in 1908 and I first read it at the age of 20, prescribed reading for the Modern Fiction course of my English Lit degree. I loved it then – for its narrative, spanning the second half of the 19th century and the opening years of the 20th, the carefully evoked settings of provincial Bursley in the Potteries and Paris, and the host of vividly and sympathetically drawn characters.

But coming back to the novel, decades later, is to find, of course, so very much more.

Bennett sets his protagonists against the backdrop of key social and political moments in both Bursley and Paris and such events certainly play an overarching role. But it is really the effect of time itself upon human lives that is his subject, the inevitable yet bewildering rapid passing of time – something that was of no particular interest when I read the novel at the age of 20 but decades on, resounds starkly.

Constance and Sophia Baines, sisters appropriately defined by their names, grow up in the family drapers’ shop in the square in Bursley with conflicting desires for their lives. Constance, biddable, acquiescent, anticipates a predicable path whilst Sophia, restless, rebellious, seeks something far beyond such a prescribed existence. Rashly eloping with the handsome travelling salesman, Gerald Scales, she is soon living with him somewhat precariously in Paris.

Bennett himself was living in Paris when he wrote the novel which was inspired, as he states in his journal, by an encounter with a solitary middle-aged woman, inordinately stout and with pendent cheeks in a Parisian restaurant. Initially repulsed by her, he consequently became curious about what lay in her past to bring her to that moment – she was once young, slim, perhaps beautiful …her case is a tragedy.

The novel is structured in four parts, namely Mrs Baines, Constance, Sophia, whilst the fourth entitled What Life Is reunites the sisters towards the end of their lives after many years estranged and is intensely poignant as the two women confront the disparity between their adolescent hopes and the realities that time has wrought. ‘And what have I lived for? What is the meaning of it?’ The riddle of life itself was killing her, and she seemed to drown in a sea of inexpressible sorrow, Bennett tells us of the once impulsive and ardent Sophia.

To me, The Old Wives’ Tale is a masterpiece that has long been overlooked as Bennett appears to have slipped out of bookish fashion. Yet it tells the story of two women (three including the matriarchal Mrs Baines) who discover their own strength and resilience when the lives they had anticipated take very different turns, a theme as relevant now as when the novel was published in 1908. Both sisters find themselves victims of circumstance, of domestic as well as political change and twists of fate. Sophia does more than simply survive the Siege of Paris and the Commune of 1870 and prospers, discovering a stalwart, astute mentality to replace her youthful fecklessness whilst Constance, wishing only for the predictability of Bursley and the drapers’ shop, is forced to confront events that threaten such prosaic stability.

But then this is a realist novel. Bennett believed that literature should be accessible to ordinary people and the concerns of his novels are the concerns of ordinary lives perpetually shadowed by the extraordinary. As Sophia observes towards the end of her life, humanity walks ever on a thin crust over terrific abysses and The Old Wives’ Tale catches this very simple yet startling truth.

The literary cliques and elites that Bennett so despised might have scorned his concern with the mundane and commonplace, but, like the greatest and most enduring of writers, his strength lies in his ability to portray such lives with empathy and conviction.

The Old Wives’ Tale is a memorable and masterful example of his craft.

The Old Wives' Tale is published by Penguin Classics. 

The Legacy of Mr Jarvis by Jude Hayland is published by Matador.

Special feature: Q&A with Sue Purkiss about her first novel for adults, AN ORDINARY WAR

 

"I realised in the end that the Dad I knew wasn’t the young man who’d been through the war. Harry isn’t Dad, though they shared some of the same experiences ... "

 Sue Purkiss has enjoyed parallel careers in teaching and writing. Starting as an English teacher in secondary schools, she went on to work with children who were out of school for medical reasons, and with young offenders. She also spent five years working as a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Bristol and Exeter Universities, and has taught creative writing in the community for more than twelve years.

Her books until now have been for children. They include historical fiction (Jack Fortune, Warrior King and Emily’s Surprising Voyage, which was long-listed for the Carnegie), and a contemporary novel, The Willow Man, as well as several retellings and a life of Shakespeare. An Ordinary War is her first novel for adults. 

Sue lives in Somerset, whose magical landscapes provide the settings and inspiration for several of her stories. 

Sue answers questions from Linda Newbery.

-        Linda: First, congratulations on publishing your first novel for adults, and we’re delighted that its home is with Writers Review Publishing! An Ordinary War is partly based on your father’s experiences as a prisoner-of-war. Did he talk about this, or was he – like Harry – silent on the subject?

Sue: Thank you, and I’m very happy to be part of Writers’ Review Publishing!

Dad only started to talk about his experiences late in life – and then, it was mostly about the funny bits (many of which have made their way into the book).  There were some things that he remembered with fondness: he enjoyed working in forestry, and he often spoke with relish of the pea and ham soup which was made by the farmer’s wife on one of the work camps he was on. He only rarely referred to the darker bits: I do remember him saying once that no-one knows what they’re capable of until they’ve been really hungry. (When he came home in 1945, he weighed, I think, about six and a half stone.) He also talked about how he was captured on the way to Dunkirk.

-        Linda: Did he keep a journal, as Harry does in the story, and if so when did you first become aware of it?

Sue: He did keep a journal, but sadly, it didn’t make it home with him. On that long march across the north of Germany in the bitterly cold winter of 1945 – which is described in the book – he sold it to a Russian, who wanted the paper for cigarettes. The Russian gave him a loaf of bread for it. Such a shame! I do have some documents, but they are mostly letters written to him by his mother and sisters before they knew he had been captured – the army returned the letters to the family, which is why I have them. One, from his mother, is particularly poignant: she’s obviously very anxious because she hasn’t heard from him, and begs him to find a minute to drop her a line.

-        Linda Which parts of the story are based directly on what happened to him?

Sue: Harry and Dad both come from a working-class background in Ilkeston, Derbyshire, and they share the same family – a mother and five sisters: Dad’s father died when he was fourteen. The route of his journey into and out of captivity is the same. Art, Harry’s friend, is very loosely based on Shep, whom he met when they were both POWs, and with whom he stayed in touch for the rest of his life. I met Shep: a lovely, gentle person. Zofi and most of the other POWs are completely made up: Eamon has some of the characteristics of someone I met once or twice at university and for some reason always remembered – but he was one of those characters who really took on a life of his own. I’m very fond of Eamon, rascal as he is! RSM Lord was a real person, and was at the camp at Fallingbostel: I remember Dad talking about him.

-        Linda: What kind of research did you do for the story? I know that you’ve visited several of the places, which must have been very moving.

Sue: After Dad died, in 2004, I decided to try and find out more about his wartime experiences. I knew that there were very large gaps in my knowledge of what had happened to him. I started off with the Imperial War Museum, and they were very helpful. They recommended some books – one by someone who must also have been taken prisoner at or on the way to Dunkirk, and was in the same prison camps in Poland as he was. That was very useful – I’ve credited it and the other main ones I used at the end of the book.

They also told me that returning prisoners of war were supposed to fill in a form outlining their experiences, and that all of these are kept at the National Archives in Kew. So that was my next trip.

And it was unexpectedly moving. When I put in my request, the archivist warned me that though everyone was supposed to fill in one of these forms, not everyone did: it was possible that Dad’s form wouldn’t be there. Knowing Dad’s approach to form-filling (one, unfortunately, which he passed on to me), I resigned myself to the likelihood that he would somehow have managed to avoid it, and I leafed through the thick file without any real expectation of finding his form.

But it was there. And what I hadn’t anticipated was that it would have been in his own, very distinctive handwriting: he enjoyed writing letters, and I’d had so many of them over the years that his writing was instantly recognisable. As I looked at it, I had, as they say, a moment.

This form told me exactly which camps he had been in – all of them in Poland except for the last one. It told me of his escape attempts and punishments: there was a question as to whether he’d been badly treated, but he brusquely shrugged this one off, and I could tell that by this stage he was getting impatient and wanted to be off.

Some time after this I visited the site of one of the camps, Torun, in Poland, known during the war as Thorn. In this I was extremely fortunate to have the help of my son’s Polish partner, Joanna – I couldn’t have done it without her.

-        Linda:What were you reading before or during the writing?

Sue: I read all the books I could find about how prisoners of war were treated by the Germans – there’s a list in the book. They were amazing books – so carefully researched, but so readable. There’s also an online BBC archive called The People’s War, which gathered together people’s experiences of the war, and is still available. That was both useful and fascinating.

-        Linda: Which were the hardest parts to write?

Sue: It wasn’t hard to write, though I kept changing my mind as to how to begin and end it.

What was hard was that I’d wanted in the beginning to get across Dad’s character, and the way he viewed his experiences. He didn’t feel any animosity towards the Germans – he always said there were good and bad people, same as you’d find anywhere. But he did draw a sharp distinction between the Gestapo and the Wehrmacht.

But I realised in the end that the Dad I knew wasn’t the young man who’d been through the war. Harry isn’t Dad, though they shared some of the same experiences.

-        Linda: Is this something you’ve felt compelled to write for some time?

Sue: Yes, I did feel compelled to write it. It seemed to me that the only stories I’d read about the experience of being a POW in Germany/Poland were set in officers’ camps and they were different in several significant ways: in particular, officers weren’t obliged to go out on work camps – so presumably they had more time to concoct ingenious escape plans. And I always felt a bit short-changed, on occasions when the rescue from Dunkirk was – absolutely rightly – celebrated: but with only a rare mention of the 30,000 or so who were not rescued, and who therefore spent five years of their young lives in captivity. I wanted to redress that a little bit.

-        Linda: You’ve written mainly for children till now, although I know you’ve had some success with short stories for adults, in competitions. Do you think you’ll continue writing for adults?

Sue: Yes, I think so. But who knows? Sometimes an idea beckons, and you follow…

-        Linda:What are you working on now?

Sue: I’m working on short stories – many of them arising from the lives of artists, or from their paintings.

Linda: Thank you - and I know An Ordinary War will be enjoyed by its readers!

An Ordinary War is the sixth title from Writers Review Publishing.

The other titles are:

The Poet's Wife by Judith Allnatt

Spirit of the Place by Dennis Hamley

David: the Unauthorised Autobiography by Mary Hoffman 

The One True Thing by Linda Newbery

Miss McVey Takes Charge by Sheena Wilkinson

SUMMER ROUND-UP by Adèle, Celia and Linda

Adèle, Celia and Linda give their latest recommendations.

Linda's choices:

Rough Patch by Kathy Slack is a memoir of breakdown and recovery. We're accustomed to the idea that being outside in natural surroundings is beneficial to our wellbeing; in Kathy's case the cure came, specifically, through vegetable growing. Severe depression led to the abandonment of a demanding but unrewarding career in advertising and a retreat to her Cotswolds home. She frequently acknowledges her privilege - loving husband, beautiful house, 'enough money not to worry about money' - yet none of these assets provided a defence against debilitating depression. Dismissing the 'woo' of abstract concepts like gratitude and blessings, she felt her recovery begin with the scattering of seeds, their germination and the resulting harvest. 'I've been unable to do virtually anything for myself ... And here I am now, with a lettuce of my very own.' An engaging read, written with warmth and humour - and there are recipes, too, based on what the garden produces.

Still - a mindful practice for photographers by Paul Sanders is the next book I read, which as it happens is also by an author who held a high-profile job (photography editor for The Times) before experiencing breakdown and recovery. For Paul Sanders, salvation came through photography - and from a particular kind of photography, focusing not so much on the technical side as on the mindfulness of looking, seeing and appreciating. Beautifully produced, Still is illustrated throughout, mainly in black and white but occasionally in colour, with images which will encourage you to go out with your camera, not to 'snap' or 'capture' but to see which images offer themselves to you. Reviewer Graeme Fife has written a fuller appreciation of this book, which will appear soon.

The Angel of St Piran by John Ironmonger: When does ‘conservation’ mask animal exploitation? That question is at the heart of this thrilling novel, set in Tanzania. Young researcher Angel, who lives among wild chimpanzees on a forested island, must fight for the animals’ survival and her own against an organisation that provides wealthy hunters with opportunities to kill. Many of us, revolted by images of hunters posing proudly with their victims, are familiar with the argument that controlled ‘trophy hunting’ can benefit wild animal populations and habitats. There’s no doubting which side John Ironmonger is on; readers will be rooting for Angel and her chimpanzee companions against the pitiless invaders as the situation becomes ever more dangerous. Partly inspired by the work of the great Jane Goodall, the novel explores animal communication and how much we can learn from wild creatures when we’re willing to listen. This was my introduction to an author with a thorough knowledge and passionate feeling for animal issues; I’m now eager to read his earlier novel, The Wager and the Bear. (Note: The Angel of St Piran will be published in September - I read an advance proof.)

Celia's choices:

Keeping The World Away by Margaret Forster: I recently went to a wonderful Gwen John Exhibition at Cardiff Museum and Art Gallery. I was with my Book Club and we were celebrating thirty years of reading and meeting. The book choice was Margaret Forster’s Keeping The World Away. The novel is based on a depiction of a corner of Gwen John’s attic room in Paris. The painting is small, like much of Gwen John’s work and very simple, the light coming through a window onto a plain wooden table which holds a bunch of primroses. The only hint of a human presence is an empty wicker chair, a discarded coat and a parasol but the paintings speak volumes about the woman who painted it.
Gwen John painted several versions of this scene, all slightly different. The novel begins with the artist herself and her life in Paris. She gifts one of these paintings, unsigned, to a friend. The friend loses it, something she regrets for the rest of her life. The painting is restless. Lost, stolen, mislaid, sold, finally bequeathed, it passes from one woman to another. Each woman falls under the painting’s indefinable spell and finds something that speaks to her own need for calm, quiet, solace, a life of one’s own. Forster weaves their very different stories into a complex narrative that spans much of the twentieth century. Ultimately, the novel is a love letter to a painter and her painting. I really admired the novel and it was a very special experience to have it fresh in my mind as I stood in front of A Corner of the Artist’s Room in Paris.

Is A River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane: The answer to the question posed by the title of Robert Macfarlane’s book is an unequivocal Yes, they are very much alive, should have Rights like other living beings and should be protected as, ultimately, all life depends on them. He takes us with him on three expeditions to rivers in very different parts of the world. The Cloud-forest of Ecuador, a unique environment with astonishing biodiversity, where the rivers are threatened by god mining. Southern India where the rivers are already horribly polluted and dying and the Magpie River in North-eastern Quebec, a magnificent, wild river threatened by damming to produce hydroelectricity. In each place he links up with activists, often Native people, to whom the rivers are alive, have always been alive and who are fighting to save them and all the life that depends on them. Macfarlane is a writer who combines the vivid excitement of the best travel writing with a wide and erudite knowledge of the natural world. His writing is passionately felt, very radical but also profoundly philosophical and deeply spiritual. He brings the book home, literally, to a fragile wellspring in the chalk lands near his home, which is threatened on all sides by building development and he finds hope in its ability to flow anew. He reminds us of our own reverence for rivers and water, remembered in the names of our rivers, the Severn, the Thames and the Dee.

Purple Citrus & Sweet Perfume by Silvena Rowe: like Adèle, I love a cookery book. So much so, that my latest novel. Miss Graham's Cold War Cookbook (later re-titled Miss Graham's War), has a cookery book at the heart of the narrative (the clue is in the original title). I first saw Purple Citrus & Sweet Perfume in my local artisanal baker and coffee shop. I couldn't resist the beautiful cover or the equally beautiful title. I immediately picked it up and was entranced by page after page of fascinating Eastern Mediterranean recipes and lovely illustrations. Part cookery, part history, part travelogue, part memoir, it's my favourite kind of cookery book. Silvena Rowe is of Bulgarian Turkish heritage and her book explores the culinary legacy of the Ottoman Empire which extended from Hungary to the Persian Gulf, into Egypt and North Africa. The Ottomans controlled the Spice Road, their vast empire encompassed many different peoples and their culinary traditions. Silvena Rowe focuses for the main part on the Eastern Mediterranean. Through her recipes, she takes us from Istanbul to Syria, Jordan, the Lebanon, into the Balkans and across to Damascus. She follows in the footsteps of the great Ottoman chefs, who came from every corner of the Empire and gives a modern twist to their recipes. Her book is a celebration of one of the great cuisines of the world.     

Adèle's choices:

Wolves Eat Dogs  by Martin Cruz Smith: does anyone remember a wonderful thriller called Gorky Park? It was published in 1981 and was a huge hit. In it, we were introduced to a Moscow detective called Arkady Renko. I loved it, but somehow never kept up with  the other books in the 11 book series. I watched the movie in 1983 and enjoyed that too  but not as much as the book. 

I was persuaded to download Wolves Eat Dogs by one of those 99p Kindle offers from Amazon. (An aside: I think these offers are a Public Good for readers in these straitened times and I've since downloaded four more.) So I'm working my way through the Renko novels but this one is particularly fascinating. It's set in the Black Zone around Chernobyl and the town of Pripyat and is absolutely gripping, terrifying and full of extraordinary characters. The shadow of the accident hangs like a dark cloud over everything. It's haunting and beautifully written. Arkady is a wonderful creation and I think new readers will enjoy reading about him. I also loved the running gag about how 'Chernobyl' is actually  pronounced  'Chornobyl' in Ukrainian ... of course it's still in Ukraine now and that's a worrying fact in the present circumstances. 

More Home Cooking: A writer returns to the kitchen by Laurie Colvin: I have a thing about Laurie Colvin. This time last year in our round up, I wrote about a novel of hers called A Big Storm Knocked it Over.

This year, I'm writing about this non-fiction book. There's also, obviously, a book called Home Cooking and that's terrific too, but I've read this one most recently.

Laurie Colwin died much too young  and is not nearly well enough known. These days, we're all  used to Substack, in which writers can  reach readers and speak to them directly about their chosen subject. In Colwin's case, we're invited itno her house and more particularly her kitchen. We get glimpses into her daily life and share recipes grouped not chronologically nor alphabetically but by category. These seem totally random. How about American Corn, followed by Jam Anxiety, followed by Three Chocolate Cakes? 

Each new subject gives us recipes embedded in a kind of short story that allows us delighful glimpses into her life. I can't think of a book I own that's more comforting and life enhancing. It arouses many emotions in me, not least a great sadness that she didn't live long enough to write more books. 

I am Pilgrim  by Terry Hayes: at the very end of June, I travelled from Northern Italy to London by train. I needed, therefore, à la Gwendolyn in The Importance of Being Earnest, "something sensational" to read. This novel has been on my Kindle for many years but I had, I confess, forgotten all about it. That happens with a Kindle when you don't see the spines of books on your shelves.  It had been recommended by someone in one of the round ups of Holiday Reading choices in the newspapers. 

And what a good choice I made! It's far too long and probably could have had several large chunks cut out of it to some advantage but goodness me, what a hair-raising ride! Breathless, and thrilling and proceeding a a breakneck speed, it nevertheless has time to develop characters in impressive depth.  Pilgrim is our hero, fighting for Good against a terribly evil enemy and you root for him the whole way. It's a souped-up spy thriller, really, and that's not my usual kind of book, but it's so brilliantly done and takes you to such fascinating parts of the world along the way that you give yourself up quite happily to the thrill of the narrative. I’d recommend reading it on Kindle if possible … at over 600 pages long, the paperback version will add a lot of weight to your tote bag or suitcase.

Happy summer reading to all!

10th Birthday Special Feature: PATRICK GALE tells us what's on his radar

 

Photograph by Jo and Rob Whitworth

It's our tenth birthday! Since we started in July 2016, we've published weekly, welcomed more guests than we can count (all authors or booksellers), produced end-of-year roundups, special features and lockdown extras, and have had over a million viewings. To mark the occasion we're doing a new kind of birthday feature, On My Radar (pinched from The Observer ...) and who better to launch this for us than the popular and highly acclaimed novelist Patrick Gale? 

Patrick is a favourite here - we've reviewed several of his novels and he did a Q&A feature with us on publication of Mother's Boy (find links to all these at the end of this piece). Pictured above in his west Cornwall garden, Patrick is currently on tour with his latest novel Love Lane, but kindly found time to give us his choices in various categories.

Book? It’s impossible to pick a favourite book as I so love reading that frequently my favourite is the one currently holding me in thrall. In homage to my father, who loved them dearly, I’m currently rereading Trollope’s Barchester novels and finding them infinitely more subtle and feminist than I remember them. Doctor Thorne and Framley Parsonage are wonderful on love and economics, but they also contain marvellously free spirited women like Miss Dunstable. Highly recommended.

Film? Bette Davis’ masterpiece, Now Voyager, is always deeply nourishing on revisiting. It’s at once witty, sad and wonderfully clear eyed in its portrayal of depression, maternal oppression and the small, but significant triumphs in life.

Podcast or radio programme? I’m afraid that, since being diagnosed with Ménière’s Disease and having to wear hearing aids, I have become such an audiobook addict that podcasts and radio programmes have been elbowed aside. I’m currently doing a lot of dog walking and gardening to the accompaniment of David Rintoul’s heroic reading of Proust.

TV drama? We’re addicted to the world drama offerings on Channel 4. However terrible - and many are marvellously gripping - they give such fascinating insights into domesticity in other cultures.

Photograph by Jim Champion

Favourite walk? Right on my doorstep lies the beautiful 3 kilometre circuit across our fields and down the cliff path to Nanjizal then along the cliffs around Mill Bay towards Land’s End and home again across a different run of our fields. It may bore the dogs but I love noting the small changes from week to week on the same walk, the flowers, the weather, the insect and bird life.

Place to eat? A great treat of the Penzance LitFest is nipping across the road after a really good author talk to feast in the Honey Pot. They do delicious cakes and serious brunches.

Photograph by Tim Sheerman-Chase

A place that's inspired your writing? People always assume that Cornwall must be a great inspiration to me, but I seem to have drawn equally on my childhood memories of growing up in Winchester, the beautiful cathedral city where I lived from seven to twenty-one.

Ideal day?  I never lie in but I love waking really early and going back to bed with tea and biscuits for us both. I’d like that to be followed by a beehive inspection where I found only good things, an unexpected jaunt somewhere pretty for lunch with Aidan and then a sunny walk by the sea with the dogs. I’ve included no work in there but a few good hours of writing between bees and the unexpected lunch would lend the day an extra fillip.

Photograph by Krzysztof Ziarnek

Tree? Right outside out library window is a melaleuca linarifolia or Snow In Summer. Its delicate leaves smell like the best, headiest cough sweets and every July it is covered in flowers that look exactly like snowflakes. It’s one of the first trees we planted when we met and I’m moved that it not only survived but is thriving somewhere so unlike its native Australia.

Photograph by Linda Newbery

Season? Autumn. I love the drawing in of nights, the reaching for knitwear, the lighting of the season’s first log fire.

Dawlish Warren: photograph by David Gubler

Mode of transport? Happily, given how many hours I spend on them during a year when I have a novel to promote, I adore train journeys. I hardly ever drive beyond the Tamar but think nothing of spending nine hours staring out of a train window.

Thank you, Patrick, and we hope your tour is bringing Love Lane to a great many appreciative readers!

See also our reviews of

Take Nothing With You

Notes from an Exhibition

Love Lane

Q&A with Patrick on Mother's Boy

Guest feature by Alice Jolly: WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE DONE? - a round-up

 

"Women write about war in a way which is different from the approach generally taken by men and their stories of collaboration often have a painful authenticity ..."

Alice Jolly’s most recent novel The Matchbox Girl (Bloomsbury, 2025) won the £25,000 Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction. Her novel Mary Ann Sate, Imbecile was runner up for the £30,000 Rathbones Folio Prize and she has also won the Pen Ackerley Prize, the V.S. Pritchett Memorial Prize and an O. Henry Award (20 best short stories in the US). She taught creative writing at Oxford University for sixteen years and reviews for The Guardian and the Times Literary Supplement. 

The English have always been obsessed by the Second World War and why not? After all, we won and they lost. But is it really that simple? As we watch the rise of the far right in America, it is suddenly not so easy to accept a simplistic version of the past.

All around us, people are increasingly having to ask themselves the questions which haunted Europe in the 1930s and 40s. Could I make I make personal sacrifices to protect democracy and diversity? What if I had to choose between speaking the truth and protecting the safety of my family?
,
These are questions which I tried to unravel in my recent novel The Matchbox Girl, but these same issues have also recently been tackled by other excellent writers. Women write about war in a way which is different from the approach generally taken by men and their stories of collaboration often have a painful authenticity.

So here are recommendations of four exceptional books (three novels and a memoir) which take a fearless approach to questions of denial and complicity.

Once the Deed is Done by Rachel Seiffert, Virago 2025

Rachel Seiffert has written three novels all of which focus on the German experience of the Second World War and its aftermath. Her most recent book (shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize) is centred on a small town in Germany during and after the war. It is a novel of diffuse viewpoints, deftly steering the reader in and out of the lives of a huge range of characters but centring, in particular, on a camp for displaced people and the English Red Cross volunteer who is in charge. A graceful, quiet, subtle novel about a nation facing up to appalling mistakes and misdeeds, it is entirely immersive and quietly powerful. I particularly loved the final sections.

The Mare by Angharad Hampshire, Hamish Hamilton, forthcoming in August 2026

This is Angharad Hampshire's first novel but it is written with such fluency and confidence that you would never know. She tells the story of Ryan and Hermine (both of whom actually existed). They are living in the suburbs of New York in the 1960s when a journalist from the New York Times knocks on the door and accuses Hermine of having been a concentration camp guard. Hampshire writes this story in alternating first person voices switching from the thoughts of Hermine to those of Ryan. It should be the case that we soon hate Hermine – and we do – and yet strangely we cannot entirely dismiss her. What did she do? And is there any truth is her assertion that she is being made a scapegoat for a wider system? Gripping, dark and disturbing, this is a novel which helps us understand how an initially harmless person is drawn into acts of absolute evil.

33 Place Brugmann by Alice Austen, Bloomsbury 2025

I have to confess that I loved Alice Austen’s novel partly for very personal reasons. It is set in Brussels where I lived for sixteen years, and it is focused on a particular square which is just round the corner from where I used to live. What struck me as I read the novel was that, despite knowing Brussels so well, I have never really had any discussions with Belgians about their city’s wartime history. This is hardly surprising because (as for many occupied countries) facing the past is simply too difficult. Austen, as an American, gives voice to the city’s hidden pain. Her novel is quiet, beautifully written and utterly absorbing. Full of memorable characters and devastating scenes, it is a master class in what the best of historical fiction can achieve.

In My Grandfather’s Shadow by Angela Findlay, Bantam 2022

Angela Findlay’s extraordinary memoir tells the story of her German grandfather who was a General on the Eastern front in the second world war. Angela sets out to find out the truth about who he was and what he did – and also how his hidden legacy has impacted her own life. She writes with endless curiosity about the long shadow of war and the impact of intergenerational trauma, asking – how do comprehend the incomprehensible, love the unlovable, forgive the unforgiveable?

Alice's The Matchbox Girl is reviewed here by Jane Rogers.

Remembering MARY HOOPER, 1945 - 2026, a tribute by Celia Rees and Jean Ure

 

Celia: Here at Writers Review we were deeply saddened to hear of the death of our good friend, Mary Hooper. Mary’s death on 24th May this year was a shock to us all. She was not just a literary colleague but a friend, always there to celebrate, when celebrations were in order and commiserate when they were not. I had known her for over thirty years. She was an early member of the Scattered Authors’ Society, which is where I first met her. She was a regular participant in SAS get togethers and lunches in London with fellow authors Linda Newbery, Adèle Geras, Jean Ure, Anne Cassidy and Sally Prue. Mary was always excellent company and only ceased attending after her diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease made travel difficult for her.

She and I both wrote historical fiction for Bloomsbury Children’s Books and were often paired together for events. Mary was very good company, ebulliently funny and always very supportive, on the platform and off it. We did some memorable events together all over the country. Mary was just the same, large audience or small, her warm, engaging personality came over, as did her knowledge of her subject, which was second to none.

Fallen Grace, nominated for the Carnegie Medal

She was a prolific writer, with over a hundred titles for children and young adults. Her main focus was writing for teenage girls. That focus continued when she moved, extremely successfully, into historical fiction and this is what I know her for best. She won multiple awards and was nominated for the Carnegie Medal. Her research was always meticulous but her real talent was to make her characters come alive on the page. She was fascinated by women’s past lives and her range was wide, from the 17th Century to the First World War. Her most acclaimed novel and one of our personal favourites, Newes From The Dead, was based on an obscure historical footnote, the true story of Anne Green, a woman who was hanged at Oxford Assizes and who came back from the dead on an Oxford University dissecting table. Mary took this snippet of historical fact and spun it into an extraordinary story of survival and resilience.

Newes from the Dead, based on a historical incident

Although she set her historical fiction in different periods, all her novels are in different ways celebrations of the lives of ordinary girls and women, the people that history too often ignores and forgets. Whether they are servant girls or shopkeepers, Mary made sure that the lives of her heroines were discovered. I know as a fellow writer of historical fiction how much work and research uncovering those lives takes and how much deep understanding and empathy it takes to make these girls and women live for modern young readers. The world of children’s and young adult fiction is the poorer for her passing. She will be mourned and missed by her fellow writers and I have lost an old and valued friend.

Jean: Mary was one of my oldest writing chums – oldest, that is, in the sense that we went back a long way, sharing moments of triumph and moments of authorial outrage (mostly to do with editorial and/or publishing iniquities). I look back fondly to all those happy, gossipy lunches we had with old friends such as Adele Geras, Celia Rees, Linda Newbery and Anne Cassidy, all of us happily moaning about said iniquities.

Mary was very down to earth – even, occasionally, dismissive when it came to her own writing. “Oh,” she once airily said, when I was complaining that I didn’t know how to wind up one of my books, “I just pile all my characters into a boat and have it capsize, or kill them off in a cash crash.”

In fact she used to do a lot of research for the historical novels, such as Newes from the Dead, having belatedly taken a history degree to make up for having, as she said, spent her schooldays giggling and talking “far too much” to concentrate on learning anything.

She was a lively and amusing correspondent – I could always rely on her to lighten the mood and give me something to laugh about.

She is a sad loss and I shall miss her terribly.

Poppy, winner of the Young Quills Historical Association Award

See also Mary's Guardian obituary by her daughter Rowan.

Guest review by Laura Parker: THE TATTOOED HILLS - JOURNEYS TO CHALK FIGURES, by Jon Woolcott

 

"Like all the best travelogues about Britain, this also reveals something of ourselves. The story of the chalk figures is a tale of human nature ..."

Laura Parker is the author of Stone on Stone, a journey along Britain’s drystone walls, due to be published in April 2027. She writes features and reviews for Country Life magazine, covering nature, art and the history of the countryside. She has also been published in Little Toller’s online nature collection The Clearing, and arts/nature/culture journal Caught by the River, as well as in Scottish Field and Scottish daily The Courier. Find out more on Laura’s website.

Countryside writers often find a natural feature to hang their words upon: rivers, paths, trees, coastlines. For Jon Woolcott it is geoglyphs: the white horses and giant figures cut into the hillside of southern England. This mostly limits him to the chalk downs that run through Dorset, Wiltshire and East Sussex – Jon admits to being ‘south-minded’ – but there is no shortage of material for a writer who loves to dig in for stories.

In a chapter about the Long Man of Wilmington, for example, he manages to fit in entertaining vignettes variously about William Blake, young men on the grand tour, Benjamin Britten, photographer Lee Miller, the Dissolution of the Monasteries, a weird far-right sect called Woden’s Folk, and Noughties TV stars Trinny and Susannah. This may sound a bit too eclectic for some, but it will appeal to magpie-minded readers who enjoy the company of someone able stitch the fun bits of history skilfully together.

He writes that many hill figures ‘emerge unsteadily from history, badly documented’, and this gives plenty of scope to explore the changing ways we have tried to interpret the past as he introduces Victorian antiquarians, archaeologists and opinionated clergymen.

The Cerne Abbas Giant, for example, the erect exhibitionist etched into a river valley north of Dorchester, has provoked much speculation. Is he a Romano-British Hercules? Or inspired by Oliver Cromwell and only etched out of the turf in the 17th century? Archaeologists using a novel dating technique have now discovered the giant was Saxon. At times revered, at others covered up in embarrassment, the 55-metre high figure has seen some modifications, such as when the National Trust inadvertently created a member increase during a restoration programme.

Woolcott makes most of his visits on foot, with all the frustrations of not being able to find the figures or see them clearly, and it would be surprising if the book did not inspire some readers to pull on their boots and figure-hunt for themselves.

In the book’s portraits of each figure, the timespan can readily shift from ancient days to the era that young people would call history but some of us just think of as fond memories. There are many rewarding diversions into popular culture, including his memories of growing up beneath the image of a giant Panda face, created by students, that appeared overnight near Salisbury. This figure – no longer visible – summons up the absurdities of the 1960s, but also shows how these figures have come and gone. Unlike standing stones, they are largely temporary. Examples of disappearances include the Red Horse of Tysoe in Warwickshire, initially lost to the enclosure movement and finally planted over in the 1950s, and the Black Horse of Bush Howe in Cumbria. Those that have endured have done so for an interesting variety of reasons; from deference (military badges, or the mounted figure of George III riding away from Weymouth) to expedience (the Westbury White Horse was concreted over by a penny-pinching council in the 1950s for easier maintenance). Chalk figures can fade or become overgrown. Often they survive thanks to the care and rechalking organised by the local community, which makes the longevity of the free-running Uffington white horse even more remarkable. This is one of the oldest and most enigmatic of chalk figures, dating back to the late Bronze Age. It, ‘more than any, haunts imaginations.’ The horse’s curiously modernist design appealed to artists such as Eric Ravilious and music idols such as XTC, with the cover of their album English Settlement, and Kate Bush, who made her Terry Gilliam-directed Cloudbusting video there.

Like all the best travelogues about Britain, this also reveals something of ourselves. The story of the chalk figures is a tale of human nature: how we create infeasible works of art, tell old stories and embroider new ones, disbelieve ancestors, celebrate the land, and look after things that are important to us, even if we don’t understand why.

The Tattoed Hills is published by Aurum.

More of Laura's choices:

Land Beneath the Waves by Nic Wilson

The Place of Tides by James Rebanks