Tag Archives: Evelyn Anthony

The Doll’s House by Evelyn Anthony

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The Doll’s House by Evelyn Anthony was first published in 1992. I read a lot of Evelyn Anthony’s books back in the 1970s, those ones seemed to mainly feature Germany and Nazis if I’m recalling correctly, but The Doll’s House begins in 1990s London where Rosa Bennet works for the Foreign Office, she’s quite a high-flyer and is focused on her career, much to the chagrin of her husband who wants to start a family. Inevitably the marriage collapses.

Rosa is expecting to be sent to Brussels by the Foreign Office, it looks like she’ll eventually become a diplomat, but before that she’s sent undercover on a mission to a posh hotel. The running of the hotel has recently been taken over by a man who had been working as a spy for Britain but after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War he had been pensioned off at the age of just 52, with his espionage skills no longer needed. His old bosses had felt it necessary to check out that he was indeed settling down to ordinary life in the hotel industry.

Rosa gets dragged into the violence of Middle Eastern politics, and an unexpected romance.

This is quite a suspenseful thriller, but I preferred the World War 2 related plots of her earlier books.

New to me books

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Some National Trust properties have an area devoted to secondhand booksales and the one at Culzean Castle is the best one I’ve been to so when we were over in that direction visiting Dumfries House recently we took the opportunity to peruse their books. I bought:

The Doll’s House by Evelyn Anthony
Ordinary Families by E. Arnot Robertson
In Bed with an Elephant A Journey Through Scotland’s Past and Present by Ludovic Kennedy
The Bridal Path by Nigel Tranter
The Freebooters by Nigel Tranter

Latest Book Purchases

Have you read any of these ones?

Voices on the Wind by Evelyn Anthony

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Voices on the Wind cover

Voices on the Wind by Evelyn Anthony was first published in 1985. I read a lot of her books in the 1970s and loved them, she specialised in World War 2 espionage books.

In this one it’s forty years after the war and Katharine Alfurd is living in a small Sussex village, she’s fairly recently widowed and only has one daughter who she doesn’t get on with very well, so she leads quite a lonely life and has taken to visiting the local pub, drinking too much and telling anyone who will listen to her about her wartime exploits as an undercover British agent. As she had a French mother she could speak the language like a native.

The 1980s were a time when now and again high profile Nazis who had escaped justice popped up in the news, and that’s what happens in this book. Katharine had been involved with the Resistance in Occupied France and she had come into contact with Standartenfuhrer Christian Eilenburg. Now he is in France after having spent most of his life in Chile hiding from Nazi hunters. He’s about to stand trial and as Katharine had actually come into contact with him during the war she’s asked to travel to France to meet him.

Katharine’s wartime memories were never far away and now her thoughts go back to 1944 when along with others she was sent to France to help the Resistance and prepare for the Normandy invasions.

This was a great read, it does jump around a lot but I didn’t have a problem with that. I’ll be looking for more of her books.

Evelyn Anthony 1926-2018

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I was sorry to see Evelyn Anthony’s obituary in today’s Guardian, but I suppose she did have a fair old innings. I devoured her books in the 1970s and have only just begun to buy any books by her that I see, I gave all my old ones away years ago in an effort to de-clutter prior to moving house, I’m sure you know what that’s like.

Anyway, if you’re interested in reading Evelyn Anthony’s obituary have a look here.

I’ve just realised that her obituary was published online on October 10th, but didn’t appear in the physical newspaper until October 31st. They must have a backlog to work through in the newspaper!

Evelyn Anthony

Book purchases

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One of the best things about travelling around the UK is having the chance to visit different secondhand bookshops, not that there are that many of them left nowadays mind you. However, I did manage to buy eleven books on our recent trip to the Lake District, Derbyshire and Peterborough.

Books Again

My first purchase was in Penrith:
The Star Spangled Manner by Beverley Nichols – first published in 1928 but my copy is from 1937. It’s obviously his thoughts on America, a place he travelled in extensively. It’s a very nice and clean copy in fact I think it might never have been read.

At the same place I found:
The Sea for Breakfast and The Loud Halo – both by Lilian Beckwith. I’ve never read anything by her, but her books were very popular when I worked in libraries yonks ago. Again the books are in great condition, I love the covers.

Two Persephones were my next purchases – from the great bookshop in Buxton. I could spend all day in there but the old books are a bit pricey. These reprints were very reasonable though:

Gardener’s Nightcap by Muriel Stuart
Someone at a Distance by Dorothy Whipple

Somewhere, I can’t remember where, I bought Voices in the Wind by Evelyn Anthony. I used to read her books back in the 1970s but this one was published in 1985.

I bought a few books aimed at children: Pigeon Post by Arthur Ransom, Flight of the Grey Goose by Victor Canning and The Indian in the Cupboard by Lynne Reid Banks.

Over the Mountains by Pamela Frankau turns out to be the last in a trilogy, so I’ll have to track down the first two.

The last two are non-fiction:

The Blessings of a Good Thick Skirt by Mary Russell which is about women travellers and their world.

Lastly I bought a nice old copy of In Search of England by H.V. Morton This book has been reprinted a lot since it was first published in 1927 but my copy is from 1943 – complete with dust jacket.

Not a bad haul I think. Have you read any of these books?

No Resistance by Evelyn Anthony

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No Resistance by Evelyn Anthony was first published in 1967, but at somepoint the title seems to have been changed to The Rendezvous, – so confusing. I remember way back in the 1970s I devoured these books which are mainly set in wartime, often spy stories. I had no idea that this was the first such book which Anthony had written, despite having had a lot of books published before this one, they were all historical fiction. I don’t recall ever reading any of those ones – have you?

In No Resistance a young female French resistance agent Terese Masson has been arrested by the Gestapo. She’s interrogated by Colonel Alfred Brunnerman who employs psychological techniques to get information, but she knows that eventually he will have to hand her over to the torturer, if Brunnerman’s techniques fail.

She’s terrified, but at the same time very attracted to Brunnerman. Years later Brunnerman and Masson meet up in America where they have both settled. Brunnerman has changed his name and nationality to dodge prosecution, as a Nazi originally and latterly to foil the Israeli execution squads which are tracking down ex-Nazis.

This is the type of romance full of suspense which I find to be very enjoyable.