Tag Archives: Joan Lingard

Night Fires by Joan Lingard – 20 Books of Summer 2024

Posted on by

 

Night Fires by the Scottish author Joan Lingard was first published by Hamish Hamilton in 1993. It was obviously influenced by the political unrest and revolutions which were going on around the late 1980s, particularly the fall of the Romanian Ceausescu regime.  It’s one of my 20 Books of Summer.

Lara and Nik are teenagers who live in an orphanage on the outskirts of town. The orphanage is run by an evil man and woman that they nickname Dracula and The Crow. When Nik and Lara see that they are loading up their vehicle with as much stuff as they can it’s obvious that Dracula and The Crow intend to leave the orphanage, fearing for their lives. They can see and smell that mobs have set the city on fire, the people have had enough, they’ve snapped and they’re fighting back, hoping to rid themselves of the brutal and suffocating dictatorship that they’ve been living under.

Lara and Nik decide to see what’s going on for themselves and Bibi, a woman who works in the orphanage  gives them the address of her sister in the city, they can go to her if they find themselves in trouble – which they do.

This is a good read, aimed at young teenagers I think.

 

 

 

Across the Barricades by Joan Lingard

Posted on by

Across the Barricades by Joan Lingard is the second in her Kevin and Sadie series, it was first published in 1972.

Although Kevin and Sadie lived just a short distance from each other, they both come from different worlds and so hadn’t seen each other for years when they bumped into each other in Belfast town. In the previous book The Twelfth Day of July they had obviously quite fancied each other, but with Sadie being a Protestant and Kevin a Roman Catholic they couldn’t even be friends.

Now they’ve both left school and are working, so when they realise that they’re still keen on each other they decide to keep their relationship a secret, easier said than done. Kevin ends up getting badly beaten up by his one time best friends, and he loses his job.

Both families are adamant that they’ll have to give each other up and it looks like the end of the road for the couple, but when one of Sadie’s old teachers realises what has been going on he allows them to meet up at his house. He lives in a different part of Belfast, a quiet middle class area, it seems like a safe place to be, but – not for long.

This is a great read, I couldn’t help thinking that at the time it was written it was quite a brave thing to write about.  Things were going from bad to worse in Belfast and Northern Ireland in general, and the violence was moving on to England and even in Scotland it was quite common for the department store that you were shopping in to be evacuated because of a bomb threat. I’m looking forward to reading the next one in this series. Into Exile.

The Twelfth Day of July by Joan Lingard

Posted on by

The Twelfth Day of July by Joan Lingard was first published in 1970, so it was probably written just as ‘The Troubles’ of Northern Ireland started to become really serious.

The book begins on the 7th of July, just five more days to go until the Glorious 12th,  in the Jackson’s Belfast  home they’re all counting the days until the members of the Orange Lodge bands will be marching wearing their smart purple and orange uniforms and playing their instruments, it’s the highlight of their year, commemorating the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne. This year Sadie is taking part for the first time.

But the night before the big day the huge mural of King Billy on his white horse which is painted on the gable end of the Jackson’s house is daubed with green paint by some  Catholic youngsters who live in a nearby neighbourhood.  Sadie and her brother Tommy are incensed, and so begins a tit for tat battle between them and the boys they know to be the culprits. The youngsters are able to move quite easily between the two areas, something which was stopped by building a massive wall between them, to keep the two factions apart. It was still there when I visited Belfast in the mid 1990s, I suspect it might still be there.

Sadie Jackson is a great character and Kevin is obviously an admirer. This is the beginning of a series featuring them as a couple who are caught up in the religious sectarianism of the divided and violent Northern Ireland. I’m looking forward to reading the others.

The Winter Visitor by Joan Lingard

Posted on by

The Winter Visitor by Joan Lingard was first published in 1983.

The setting is the 1970s in a seaside town in the east of Scotland, not far from Edinburgh (Portobello?) where Mrs Murray is living with her two teenage children. Mr Murray is working in the Gulf, but for how long nobody knows, he seemed to have dificulty holding on to jobs. To help with finances Mrs Murray runs a boarding house during the high season, visitors rarely want to have a holiday in winter, it’s freezing.

So when Ed Black turns up looking for a room the locals are surprised, especially as he comes from Northern Ireland, as Mrs Murray’s mother comes from Belfast the rumour locally is that Mrs Murray and Ed knew each other in the past. Nick, the son isn’t happy about the situation. The injured Ed had apparently been a victim of a car bomb which had killed his wife. ‘The Troubles’ mean that N. Ireland is a dangerous place to live.

This is the first of Lingard’s Northern Irish books that I’ve read. Although she was born in Edinburgh she lived in Belfast from the age of 2 to 18, from then on she lived in Edinburgh again. The atmosphere in Belfast was/is very similar to that of the west of Scotland, with ‘mixed’ marriages between Protestants and Roman Catholics being more than just frowned upon. I think things have moved on nowadays as religion has less of an influence on people in general.

I enjoyed this one so I’ll seek out her books that have a Northern Irish setting – eventually.

I really like the book cover which was designed by Krystyna Turska.

Natasha’s Will by Joan Lingard

Posted on by

Natasha’s Will by Joan Lingard was first published in 2020. It was a Federation of Children’s Book Groups’ Pick of the Year. I must admit that I’ve never heard of that group. It’s a very quick read at just 166 pages.

This is a dual time and place setting. It begins in contemporary Scotland where Natasha has just recently died. She had been over 90 and had been cared for in her own home by family friends of generations’ standing.  Natasha had started life in St Petersburg where she had a very privileged life – until the revolution in 1917. After a lot of difficulty danger and disasters Natasha and her mother had managed to make their way out of Russia and eventually ended up in Scotland, along with Eugenie, a friend who marries a Scot.

Years later it’s Eugenie’s family that look after Natasha in her own home until she dies. Natasha had always said that she was going to leave the family her house, but her will can’t be found anywhere, and it’s thought that she didn’t actually get around to writing it. It’s a disaster for the family, especially when Natasha’s official next of kin turns up to claim his inheritance. This was a good read with plenty of tension although I was pretty sure  that everything would turn out right in the end.

As ever it’s a plus when you know the locations and I was happy to be able to recognise St Petersburg as well as Scotland. I didn’t know anything about this book when I saw it in a charity bookshop in Edinburgh, but I’ve started to collect Lingard’s books whenever I see them, which isn’t that often, even in her hometown of Edinburgh.

 

New to Me Books – from Edinburgh

Posted on by

We visited Edinburgh today, dodging Princes Street as there are no secondhand bookshops there, we headed for Stockbridge where there are a few charity bookshops. I bought:

Midnight is a Place by Joan Aiken

Elsie Piddock by Eleanor Farjeon

My Career Goes Bung by Miles Franklin

Little Plum by Rumer Godden

The Little White House by Elizabeth Goudge

The Stolen Sister by Joan Lingard

The Fortnight in September by R.C. Sherriff

Quite a few of these ones are aimed at children or young adults. Have you read any of them?

The File on Fraulein Berg by Joan Lingard

Posted on by
The File on Fraulein Berg covr

The File on Fraulein Berg by the Scottish author Joan Lingard was first published in 1980, but the setting is mainly Belfast, Northern Ireland in 1944. The war has been dragging on for three years and there seems to be no end to it. Earlier in the war the Belfast shipyards had been targeted by German bombers but more recently that had quitened down. Actually with the neutral country of Ireland being just a few hours over the border, life seems to be a lot easier than on mainland Britain where the inhabitants are struggling under the strict ration system which makes life difficult, with food and clothing being scarce.

Three schoolgirls Kate, Harriet and Sally are great friends. They’re all keen readers of spy fiction and when a real German called Fraulein Berg arrives at their school to teach them their imaginations run riot. The girls are convinced that Fraulein Berg is a spy and take it in turns to follow her everywhere, even standing across the road from her flat for hours on end, and writing everything down in notebooks. They’re really persecuting her, determined to uncover her as a spy, but it’s obviously deeply unpleasant for Fraulein Berg.

Apparently there was a lot of smuggling going on across the Ireland/Northern Ireland border and the girls get involved in a bit of that when they travel to Dublin by train with Mrs McCabe and Auntie Nell, it’s quite a funny interlude.

This is well written as you would expect from Lingard, but the ending is very predictable, it’s probably supposed to be to the reader, but the book also throws some light on what life was like for people during those times, it’s an enjoyable and interesting read.

Trouble on Cable Street by Joan Lingard

Posted on by

Trouble on Cable Street by Joan Lingard was first published in 2014 and it was the author’s last book, she died on the 12th of July 2022.

The setting is the East End of London, 1936. With Hitler in power in Germany his ranting speeches and ant-Jewish laws are making the people in Britain nervous. It feels like they’re heading for another war, when they haven’t even got over the horrors of WW1. War has already broken out in Spain between the Nationalists and Republicans, and some of the younger men have already signed up to go and fight in Spain.

The British Fascists, known as the Blackshirts and led by Oswald Mosley are taking advantage of the situation and are planning to march into an area of London which has a population of Jewish people.

Isabella works in a factory which is owned by a Jewish family. Her mother is of Spanish descent but within the family things are fraught, her two brothers are on opposite sides of the political spectrum and one of them is just about to leave to fight in Spain on the side of the Republicans and against the Fascist Nationalists, but unknown to everyone the other brother has been attending meetings of the Blackshirts.

When the Blackshirts march through their neighbourhood there’s mayhem and the family inadvertently gets involved.

This one was a great read, there is of course some romance involved, but it’s quite depressing that the same political problems are coming to the fore again in so many countries.

The Sign of the Black Dagger by Joan Lingard

Posted on by

THe Sign of the Black Dagger by Joan Lingard was first published in 2005. I borrowed this one from the library as when Lingard died recently I realised that I haven’t read many of her books and I should rectify that as she was a Scot. Typically the local library system doesn’t have many books available to borrow as in Fife the people who run the libraries (they aren’t librarians) corrall all the books by locals in their reserve stock – and they don’t let anyone borrow them!

Anyway, back to the book. The setting is Edinburgh where Will and Lucy, a young brother and sister live in a very old house in the Royal Mile which has been in the family for generations. Their father disappears suddenly and they discover that there are people after him. Their mother discovers that he has money problems, which he has been hiding from everyone, he has never been a good businessman.

While searching the house Will and Lucy discover an old journal secreted in a hole in a wall. It has been written by another William and Louisa/Lucy, ancestors of theirs, and their father has had similar problems. Both men are being pursued by men determined to get the money that they’re owed.

The experiences of both related families, with about two hundred years in between them, feature the children mainly, with the mothers in the background having had no idea that their family life was in danger.

I enjoyed this one, it was interesting to see how the authorities dealt with those in debt two hundred years ago in Edinburgh, and as ever I like it when I know the setting well, as I do, but there is a useful map if you don’t know Edinburgh’s Old Town.

The Guardian – some links

Posted on by

It’s absolutely ages since I linked to some Guardian articles, so here goes!

I was sad to see Joan Lingard’s obituary in The Guardian last week, mind you she was 90. You can read it here. I don’t know if it can be said to be apt that she actually died on July the 12th, but it’s certainly quite spooky as she wrote a book with the title The Twelth Day of July, which is of course the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne. Joan Lingard was born in a taxi in Edinburgh’s Royal Mile/High Street!

With all that’s going on in America at the moment re Roe v Wade and abortion rights/women’s rights, I thought you might be interested in reading a very informative article on how things were done in the past. I often wondered how so many families in the past managed to be so small with no real contraception available! You can read about it here. Abortion in the 19th-century US was widely accepted as a means of avoiding the risks of pregnancy, and many women routinely got rid of the problem, it was acceptable right up until ‘quickening’ when you can first feel movement, usually around the fourth month. The idea of banning or punishing it came later. The article is written by Tamara Dean.

There’s a book review: Scotland The Global History – 1603 to the Present by Murray Pittock which you can read here. I think I’ll probably try to get a copy of the book, or borrow it. There’s no doubt that Scotland and Scots have contributed a lot to the world over the centuries, especially considering we’re such a wee country. But it’s time to look to the future and not dwell on the past glories!