The Tightening String by Ann Bridge was first published in 1962 but the setting is Budapest from the spring of 1940 to Easter 1941 in Budapest. The characters are the British diplomats and their families as they experience the sensation of being in a sack with its string being pulled tighter as Italy enters the war and the Germans/Nazis take over more and more European countries.
However it’s the fate of the 44,000 British prisoners-of-war who have been captured at Dunkirk that are uppermost in the thoughts of the women, mainly the wives of diplomats. The British prisoners have almost no clothing and are freezing in their German prisons, with just one blanket to cover them and almost no food to eat.
With the Red Cross being run by old men who had been in the First World War who are absolutely clueless about how to get food parcels and warm clothing to the British men – and their refusal to be told how they should be doing it, particularly by a woman – it’s down to Mrs Eynsham the wife of the Counsellor at the British Legation to organise everything, including food donations, clothing and teaching people, including the men, to knit socks and scarves for the prisoners-of-war.
This was a great read, very atmospheric and also I think it must be very true to what the author was actually doing at the time. Ann Bridge waited over 20 years before writing about her experiences, I suspect the whole thing weighed on her chest all those years. She fairly kicks the Red Cross for being completely incompetent, certainly at the beginning of the war, I suspect that she waited until all those in control of it at the time had died off. As ever with books of this type and era the author’s frequent use of the word English when she actually means British is very annoying!
Below is the author’s note which appears at the front of the book.
This sounds very good and there are reasonably priced copies available.
tracybham,
I noticed that there are fairly cheap copies available online. I got mine in a secondhand shop and it was very cheap.
My mother used to read Ann Bridge and I am sure this one would have interested her as she is half Hungarian. I’ll have to ask if she remembers it. I don’t see them in the library any more, alas.
What a contrast between ethical authors of a bygone era who did not want to violate confidentiality or hurt the living – now we have vile people who refuse to testify because they don’t want to hurt sales of their tell-all books.
Constance,
Sadly here the libraries have got rid of the old ‘reserve stock’ books, I used to love mooching around in the basement of the first library I worked in as all the old books lived there.
This is something that I don’t know anything about, but it does seem miserable that people would put their book sales before anything else.
I am interested in WW2 stories, and always looking for different angles – and this sounds like a different angle. I will probably never locate this book and find time to read it, but I found your post fascinating, and I enjoyed reading the author’s note.
BTW The Red Cross does sometimes get it wrong it seems to me, perhaps partly because they are just so big (though I’m not sure whether they were back then.)
Whispering Gums,
Just as I was reading this book it was in the news that the Red Cross people in Ukraine had ‘legged it’ to safety, and I did think that was quite shameful as in the past I believe they were in the thick of things – but that’s easy for me to say, I would never consider doing anything like that!
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