Tag Archives: World War 2 setting

The Chalet School at War by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer

Posted on by
Reply

The Chalet School at War by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer was first published in 1941 as The Chalet School Goes To It.

The Chalet School at War Book Cover

This one begins with The Chalet School on the move again. They had fled the Austrian Tyrol after getting into ttrouble with the local  Nazis. Guernsey in the Channel Islands seemed like a good place to set up their new school!! Of course that wasn’t for long and with the Germans looking like breathing down their necks again they move on to mainland Britain.

Plas Howell on the Welsh/English border has been offered to them for use as a school. It’s a large and very grand house, beautifully decorated, much too good to be used as a school but otherwise ideal. After a dangerous journey across the English Channel the girls reach Plas Howell.

Gwensi Howell isn’t happy at all, she’s 13 years old and has lived at Plas Howell for the last nine years along with her older step-brother and his godfather. But Ernest her brother has had to join his ship and his godfather has gone. Gwensi had been educated by a governess, but she is to be part of the Chalet School now, she’s not used to other girls at all and doesn’t want to share her home with a lot of strangers.

Surprisingly Gwensi settles in fairly quickly, and she turns out to be a bit of a fan of boarding school books, and a few of them are name checked in the book, presumably Brent-Dyer was kindly mentioning some of her author friends.

With wartime food shortages looming the girls become keen gardeners and learn a lot, but as often happens in schools it’s the fourth year girls who cause a lot of trouble and angst.

I was particularly pleased that Jo appears in this book – along with her baby triplets. I’m not sure how far I’ll go with this series. It’s interesting that the books were written at the actual time of the war, but I might not go any further than the 1960s with the books. They are still being written by writers/fans who are continuing with the series.

 

I, Spy by Rhian Tracey

Posted on by
Reply

I, Spy by Rhian Tracey is aimed at younger readers. The setting is Bletchley Park, beginning in 1939 as the oh-so ‘hush hush’ decryption centre is just being built and staffed.

Robyn is just 13 years old and she lives within Bletchley Park as her parents work there. She’s really interested in animals and nature so it’s an ideal environment for her, but as she won’t be allowed to travel in and out of Bletchley to go to school she’s told that she won’t be going back to school. She’s given an apprenticeship – learning to look after the carrier pigeons that are so important for delivering secret messages.

She’s quite pleased with it all although she’ll miss her schoolfriends, but then she makes friends with Ned who visits BP with his father for work purposes on a daily basis and things look up. Then Mary, a friend from school gets a job delivering messages within the sprawling Bletchley grounds.

The three friends get up to some high jinx. Robyn is sure that there’s a high profile spy within Bletchley and she’s determined to get to the bottom of it.

This was an enjoyable read although I found that I had to suspend my disbelief at times, particularly as Robyn was expecting her father to start giving her driving lessons on her 13th birthday!! Of course she would have to be 17 before that could happen. Her father didn’t keep his promise, but it just seemed such a strange thing for a 13 year old to expect, especially back then. I can see that this book will be popular with youngsters although I doubt if any children were allowed near the place.

My thanks to the publisher Piccadilly Press for giving me the opportunity to read a digital copy of this book via Netgalley. I,Spy will be published on 2nd, March.

I enjoyed the setting which was very recognisably Bletchley Park, if you want to see what it looks like nowadays you can see some photos I took there fairly recently here, here and here.

The Return by Anita Frank

Posted on by
Reply
The Return cover

This is a dual time tale beginning in June 1939 Tyneside which Jack Ellison has had to leave quickly and unexpectedly after a fight, he reaches Berkshire and feels lucky to be given work on a farm, but war is in the air and he has decided to join the army as soon as he can. Meanwhile he has fallen for Gwen his employer’s daughter, but she has a complicated love life and isn’t much interested in Jack, but he could be of use to her.

Gwen is the farmer’s daughter and the tale from her point of view begins in May 1945 when everyone is waiting for sons and husbands to be demobbed – the ones that have survived anyway. But Jack has told Gwen that he will never be back even if he does survive the war.

There’s supposed to be a bit of a mystery about Jack’s background but to be honest I found it all to be very predictable, it seemed obvious how things were going to resolve. The book is far too long and has too much in it about the farming methods of the time. I’m all for authors doing research but it doesn’t ALL have to be added to the book.

Also from my own family history I have knowledge of exactly what happened to the soldiers who had taken part in the Dunkirk debacle, and they were kept well away from the D-Day landings, but were deployed to the ‘cleaning up’ operation a couple of weeks later, a form of punishment really as they were seen as tainted by failure and possibly psychologically not fit to have another go at the German army. It was years before it dawned on me that what my father-in-law meant by ‘cleaning up’ was that they had to deal with all the dead bodies that were lying around the countryside. In this book the Dunkirk survivors take part in D-Day though, and that makes me question how correct other facts are, such as the scanty shipbuiding details which I suspect are wrong, it’s another subject I have some knowledge of as the sister of Clydeside shipbuilders and a viewer of historic films on shipbuilding. Yes I might be nit-picking.

Anyway, this is yet another book which would have benefitted with being edited – a lot. However, that’s my thoughts on the matter, others may thoroughly enjoy the long and slow tale. I really couldn’t find much to like in Gwen’s personality, which is always a problem for me. It is I suppose a re-write of Far from the Madding Crowd, including the rural life, but nobody can write rural society as well as Thomas Hardy could. However, if you haven’t read Hardy and you don’t mind a lot of padding then you might enjoy this.

Thank you to NetGalley for sending me a digital copy of the book for review via HQ.

Green Park Terrace by Isabel Cameron

Posted on by
4
Green Park Terrace cover

I haven’t been able to find out anything about Isabel Cameron but from her writing she was obviously Scottish. My copy of this book does have its dustjacket which has some information regarding her other books and the information that over 750,000 copies of Isabel Cameron’s books have been sold. And from the Glasgow Herald – “All Mrs Cameron’s work has that grace, humour and feeling that people love.”

Green Park Terrace by Isabel Cameron was published in 1949 but the setting is a town in Scotland during World War 2 and the Green Park which the terrace overlooks is rumoured to be taken over by the army, the Lovat Scouts to be precise. The news is not welcomed by Mrs Warren of No.1 Terrace Park, she thinks that the soldiers will be rowdy and drunken and will likely spend their time swearing and fighting. Her servant, a young woman from the Isle of Lewis is enthusiastic about the prospect though as you can imagine!

Each chapter deals with the attitudes of various neighbours at different Green Park Terrace house numbers. They’re a very mixed bunch, one house has been turned into a guest house. Another is inhabited by a very demanding woman who thinks she is an invalid and her poor downtrodden daughter. There’s a career woman in one house, determined that having a child isn’t going to change her life and her work in a frock shop, but when the nanny ends up in hospital everything begins to fall apart.

There’s many a mention of Lord Woolton who was appointed Minister of Food during the war, as ever, food and rationing feature. Actually I’ve made Woolton Pie and it wasn’t bad.

This is an enjoyable read and as it was published in 1949 it seems that writers, readers and publishers weren’t too keen to drop the subject of World War 2 on the home front. I suspect that a lot of people were hankering for ‘the good old days’ of war, when so many people, particularly women who had been kicking their heels and bored stiff at home found that they were happy and busy doing war work of some kind. The end of the war wasn’t welcomed by everyone.

I’d be interested to hear if any of you have read anything by Isabel Cameron

Crooked Heart by Lissa Evans

Posted on by
2
Crooked Heart cover

I borrowed Crooked Heart by Lissa Evans from the library as some blogger pals had enjoyed it so much and I thought that with its World War 2 setting it would be right up my street. To begin with I actually found it quite slow but when I did get into it I really enjoyed it. There are quirky characters and on the surface they seem unlikable but I ended up really appreciating them.

Noel Bostock is an unusual 10 year old, he loves books and speaks like a well-educated adult, which doesn’t endear himself to the other children in the school in St Albans that he has been evacuated to from London. His parents are dead and he’s really alone in the world. He’s billeted with Vera Sedge who is a 36 year old unmarried mother of a brat of a 19 year old son. Her mother is also part of the household, but she hasn’t spoken since Vera announced to her that she was pregnant, the shock was too much for her.

Vera is always short of money and her various nefarious schemes to get out of debt have been unsuccessful – until Noel gets involved. Vera had been lonely as she could never have a conversation with her mother, and her son wasn’t interested in her at all. When Noel begins to actually have conversations with her it’s a pleasant surprise for her, even if he’s often explaining things to her – as if he were the adult. They end up being quite a team.

I’m more used to reading books that were actually written during the war but I think this one captured the atmosphere well, particularly the amount of dodgy dealings that were going on. There used to be a myth going about that criminal activities almost disappeared during the war effort when of course the opposite is true. Often formerly honest people turned to crime. Dishonest people grabbed the new opportunities that opened up for them, and the blackout was a great help to people getting up to things under the cover of darkness.

Amongst the blurb on the back is this: ‘Spirited, quirky characters and a devilish wit… Why is Lissa Evans not one of our best-known and best-loved authors?’ Sunday Express

I’ll certainly be looking out for more books by her.

Spring Magic by D.E. Stevenson

Posted on by
4
Spring Magic cover

Spring Magic by D.E. Stevenson was first published in 1942 but I read a 1986 reprint which had to be hauled out of Fife Libraries’ reserve stock. I’m only thankful that they haven’t got rid of the books completely, as they have with so many other authors.

I’m not close to having read all of D.E. Stevenson’s books but so far Spring Magic is my favourite. The setting is mainly Scotland and during World War 2. I’m very partial to wartime books especially when they are contemporary.

Frances Field is living in London with her aunt and uncle, she has been with them for years as her parents died when she was quite young. Her aunt is a very silly selfish woman and she believes that Frances is there to pander to her every wish. The aunt is a hypochondriac and Frances had been very sorry for her, but when the doctor tells Frances that there’s nothing wrong with her aunt and urges Frances to get out and get a life for herself, she does just that, taking the aunt’s decision to decamp out of London to a supposedly safer location as her cue to have a holiday in Scotland and think about her future.

The island fishing village that Frances finds herself in is sleepy and friendly but it isn’t long before the whole area is inundated with a battalion of soldiers from the British army, changing everything, especially as some of the officers’ wives have arrived too. Frances has never really had any women friends her own age before and it opens up a whole new world for her.

Not everything is sweetness and light as Frances realises along with everyone else that one of the wives is in an abusive marriage, but nothing can be done about it. Aerial dogfights and air raids bring the war right to her door and there are misunderstandings but as you would expect – all’s well in the end.

The Machine-Gunners by Robert Westall

Posted on by
Reply
The Machine-Gunners cover

The Machine-Gunners by Robert Westall was first published in 1975 and it won the Carnegie Medal.

We’re back at the Second World War in this book, the setting is the fictional town of Garmouth on Tyneside where the children were enthusiastically seeking out war souvenirs in the shape of spent machine-gun bullets, shrapnel and the tailfins from incendiary bombs. They’re vying with each other all determined to have the best collection. Chas McGill has the second best collection, the best is owned by the local school bully who takes great delight in bashing everyone up but of course he is really a coward.

Chas hits the jackpot when he discovers the wreckage of a downed German aeroplane deep in a local woodland. With the help of some friends he manages to free the machine-gun from it and with the help of a tremendously strong mentally challenged neighbour they all set about building an underground shelter for the gun – which expands and expands until it’s a large air raid shelter. The children become adept at nicking anything they need so it’s a real home from home. In fact as one of them lost both his parents in a recent Tyneside air raid the shelter has become his home, the authorities think he also perished in the raid.

At one point an escaped German prisoner of war stumbles across their hide-out and as they’ve somehow managed to jam the machine gun they realise that he can help them fix it. The prisoner is exhausted and ill and the children look after him, well they can’t turn him over to the authorities, he would tell them about their machine-gun.

This is a great read which at times has elements of ‘Dad’s Army’ about it with the Home Guard featuring and local enemies being much more annoying than the German prisoner who isn’t at all like a Nazi, he seems like a decent chap.

This book is very autobiographical, the author dedicated it to his father and mother who were the father and mother in the book.

He says: The bombing raids on Tyneside during the despairing winter of 1940-41 were appalling and relentless and The Machine-Gunners is a tribute to the endurance, courage and humour of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.

Dear Mrs Bird by A.J. Pearce

Posted on by
2
Dear Mrs Bird cover

Dear Mrs Bird by A.J. Pearce which has just been published has been recommended by various Goodreads friends and bloggers recently and given the World War 2 London in 1941 setting it seemed it would be right up my street – and it was.

Emmeline Lake has always fancied being a newspaper reporter, really she would love to be a war correspondent eventually. When she sees an advert for a job at a newspaper she thinks it’s a job made for her. She’s so excited about the prospect of becoming a journalist that she doesn’t pay much attention at the interview. She’s successful in getting the job but on her first day there she realises she has been an idiot as the job is actually for a typist, an office junior, and it’s not even at a newspaper. She’s working for Woman’s Friend which is a very old-fashioned publication, but even worse than that it seems to be ruled over by Mrs Bird who is an absolute harridan, a bully and a complete prude.

There’s a problems page with readers writing in to find solutions to the situations they’ve found themselves in, but Mrs Bird will have nothing to do with any UNPLEASANTNESS and Emmy’s time is mainly taken up with cutting up problem letters that Mrs Bird doesn’t even want to see never mind answer. Emmy feels that she should try to help these desperate women and gets herself into trouble over it.

Meanwhile her fiance Edmund is causing problems for her, and as the Luftwaffe cause mayhem in London Emmy and her friends at the Auxiliary Fire Service Station that she volunteers at part-time are having a tough time. But this book is certainly not all doom and gloom in fact it has plenty of humour.

World War 2 is just about my favourite setting and I read a lot of books that were written then, so I was a wee bit worried that this one might not have the correct wartime atmosphere but it is mainly successful although the author mentions the sound of machine guns during a bombing raid. There’s no mention of the ack-ack guns which would have been booming out constantly trying to shoot down the Luftwaffe, machine guns would be useless under those circumstances. Page 196 has some repetition with a paragraph being repeated with the second one having a bit more added on at the end and elsewhere there’s a spelling mistake – just mentioning!

Confusion by Elizabeth Jane Howard

Posted on by
4
Confusion cover

Confusion by Elizabeth Jane Howard is the third book in her Cazalet Chronicles, it was first published in 1993. World War 2 is in full swing now and the Cazalet’s lumber business is in trouble because the government is insisting that they pay tax on the wood that was destroyed when their dockside warehouses were bombed in the previous book. But that’s by the by. It’s the personal lives of the family members that fill the book of course.

Louise has married the much older artist Michael Hadleigh, but he’s now in the navy and Michael is still attached to his mother’s apron strings. When he gets leave he spends the time with mummy and it isn’t long before it’s obvious that he has only married Louise so that she can provide him with loads of children – and then he will have plenty of subjects to paint right on hand. Too late Louise realises that he isn’t really interested in women at all, and her mother-in-law is a monster.

I can imagine that some readers might think that the mother-in-law is completely over the top but there are some around that are exactly like that. Believe me!

In fact in Confusion many of the characters are coming to the end of relationships, whether they know it or not.

Despite the fact that the Louise/Michael relationship was getting my blood pressure up and I was planning what I would do to Edward if I were his wife I did really enjoy this book and I’ll be reading the next one in the series Casting Off – early in the new year. I think that Sandra @ A Corner of Cornwall and I are doing a readalong of it.

I’m going to be starting reading Christmas themed books soon in an attempt to get me into the spirit of it all and I’ll be joining the Spirit of Christmas Challenge, but more about that soonish.

Marking Time by Elizabeth Jane Howard

Posted on by
5
Marking Time cover

Marking Time by Elizabeth Jane Howard was first published in 1991 and is the second book in the Cazalet Chronicles.

I found this one to be just as enjoyable as The Light Years, the first book in the series, always a bit of a scene setter. The characters are all maturing nicely, inevitable given the things they’re experiencing.

The older members of the family take a bit of a back seat for a lot of this book as the focus is on the younger generation and how they are coping as the war just begins to bite deeper into every aspect of life.

Rupert’s young second wife Zoe is never going to be the same again after her horrific experience in book one, something so shaming she’s never going to tell anyone about it, but the birth of Rupert’s son has given her something to live for while Rupert is thought by everyone to almost certainly be dead.

Villy has been seriously ill but she and her husband Edward are in denial of the whole illness and heartbreakingly as Villy goes into remission and feels so much better she jumps to the conclusion that her health has turned a corner and she is getting back to normal with nothing to worry about. Edward, her otherwise despicable husband can’t bear to tell her the truth. Their whole marriage has been based on secrets with Villy sticking her head in the sand when she doesn’t want to admit things, either that or she’s just too dim for words.

The families’ London houses have all been more or less shut up for the duration of the war as bombs have been raining down on the capital, damaging the woodyards belonging to the Cazalets, so important to the war effort and their income.

There are secrets aplenty, unrequited love, affairs and annoying unfair prejudices against daughters by mothers. It’s just after that time known as ‘the Phoney War’ when life in Britain went on much as before for the first months of it and rationing for clothes and food hadn’t quite taken hold.

Mind you the Cazalets were rich and the rich were/are always cushioned from the daily deprivations that others have to get used to. Such is life and it’s that sort of reality that makes me feel that Howard has captured the atmosphere of wartime south of England. I’m looking forward to the next in the series which I think is called Confusion.

Joan @ Planet Joan read Marking time recently too and you can read her thoughts on it here.