A HUGE welcome to the many new joiners who read about our book club on Substack (here, in case you missed it). I’m looking forward to getting to know you and introducing you to the rest of our wonderful group!
Please join our July discussion thread by clicking the button below and sharing your recommendations for:
Anything you’ve loved this July.
Anything to do with The Second World War, in particular to do with The Home Front - tying in with this month’s pick, Saplings by Noel Streatfeild.
The live discussion takes place TODAY at 1.30-2pm, but if that time doesn’t work for you, please feel free to share your contribution whenever you like.
I’m kicking things off with one of my favourite books of all time:
A Long Way from Verona by Jane Gardam. This slim novel is the funny and evocative first novel from the author of Old Filth. It’s about young Jessica Vye, growing up in wartime Yorkshire and determined to be a writer, as she copes with the trials of school, tonsillitis, an eccentric family and many wartime deprivations… It features perhaps the world’s worst date – after holding sweaty hands on the train, a bomb goes off!
Have you read it? What did you make of it?
Join the thread to share and discover more great books about The Second World War. I’m longing to know your recommendations!
Thank you for including me in your July book announcement. I have just bought it for my Kindle. I'm brand new to your club. I live in Stuart, Florida, USA, but this summer, we are in our RV exploring the Dakotas, Montana, and Wyoming. While searching for a new book, I found your blog & picked up one of your prior recommendations in a tiny, gorgeous western town called Red Lodge at the foot of the Beartooth mountain range on the Montana-Wyoming border. We drove up 10,000 feet and saw mountain goats. In ND and SD, we went through a herd of bison. So exciting. I want to find a gripping western tale for your club out here, written by a local, if possible. If perhaps one day you would be interested.
In the meantime, I tell you about my summer adventure because of my love for animals and history, and reading, of course. Particularly American history, WWI, WWII, and our country’s revolutionary and civil wars. (I also enjoy your country’s storied history with Ireland and your kings and queens.) So, regarding your quest for WWII stories, have you read Elephant Company by Vicki Constantine Croke? It is a beautiful non-fiction tale that reads like a novel. If your readers love WWII books, animals, or heroism, this book is a winner! Easy to read, thoughtful and historic, learn a lot about WWII, and fall in love with one of the closest loving and communicative animals to humans.
Hi, I’ve just joined so I was out of the loop of this month’s recommendation topic/book, but one July book was Timothy Egan’s “A Pilgrimage to Eternity: From Canterbury to Rome in Search of a Faith.” I’m a long distance walker so am curious about this hiking route. To counterbalance that creative non-fiction book, I just finished Leigh Bardugo’s fantasy novel, “Ninth House.” I’m a voracious reader of many genres so am looking forward to hearing about books to add to my “to read” list. Regarding WWII books, one of my recent favourites is “All the Light We Cannot See,” by Anthony Doerr. My fingers are crossed the upcoming adaptation is as powerful as the novel.
I also just read Appointment with Venus by Jerrard Tickell set during the Nazi occupation of Sark and recently republished by Manderley Press. And there’s a b&w movie of the same name made in 1951 and available on YouTube.
Good afternoon and thank you for the welcome. I no longer live in London, but I still love books and I've been reading through the suggestions.
Regarding some WW2 books - too many to list, but here are two I enjoy that nobody mentioned: Marc Bloch's Strange Defeat, a non-fiction book he wrote just after the fall of France in 1940; and Flight to Arras (Pilote de guerre), by Antoine de Saint Exupéry - a slightly novelised account of his French Air Force Reconnaissance work during the Battle of France in 1940, written after he arrived in New York in 1941 and first serialised in English in The Atlantic Monthly magazine in early 1942 (it became part of the expatriate French effort to persuade the American public that entering the war in Europe was a worthy cause). Both were written when France was occupied, and by authors who never saw the end of the war - or in Bloch's case, never saw the Normandy D-Day - as both died fighting for France (St Ex left NYC in 1943 and was reintegrated in his Reconnaissance unit of the French Air Force - as attached to the US Air Force - in North Africa, then Corsica.)
July is a busy work month for me, so I tend to read light stuff when I have the time - I am enjoying Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan series, space opera with derring-do and political shenanigans, witty and well-written. I'm also reading some of the short stories in James Tiptree Jr's Her Smoke Rose Forever - they are very good! (Tiptree was the pseudonym for Alice Bradley Sheldon). I'm going through a science fiction period.
Pereira Maintains is one of my favourite books. I’ve noted the other two - I know the film of Christ Stopped at Eboli. If the book is anything as good, I’ll love it.
Hi! New here. I recently read All The Light We Cannot See, which I am sure is not new to you, but I loved it. I also read Lilac Girls which was such an interesting take, viewed from the eyes of 3 different woman.
The idea is we have a manic half hour of typing. People can also add recommendations afterwards. And then it's all here preserved for us to refer back to, when we need inspiration for something to read / watch etc.
Did I misunderstand that the discussion is online just now? None of the links/emails lead to me to Zoom or other online live discussion. I seem to have wasted my time trying to find it. Will there be a recording? My first attempt to comment disappeared when I looked back to previous messages. My comment would be how much I prefer works written during the second world war when no one knew the outcome or how long it would take. I’m afraid I don’t think I can go through 88 previous comments so probably others have suggested titles. Thank you. Sorry to miss you. Best wishes, Barbara
Though one of our upcoming books we are publishing this October will, I'm confident, become a favourite too. But I can't tell you anything more about it than that!
Well of course I don’t have a favourite Persephone Book just like I don’t have a favourite child, BUT… some of the titles of which I’m fondest include THE HOME-MAKER, THE CALL, THEY WERE SISTERS, TO BED WITH GRAND MUSIC, and our newest, ONE AFTERNOON, a 1975 love story by a Welsh writer named Siàn James. (Sorry, that's more than 3!).
Thumbs up for Iris Origo (stood outside her old house Tuscany a few years ago), Suite Francaise and A Few Eggs and No Oranges! For a totally different perspective A German Officer in Occupied Paris, the war journals 1941-45 of Ernst Junger is completely fascinating.
Does anyone remember A Family at War, an ITV series about a family in wartime Liverpool? It ran in the early 70s and I found it completely compelling. Apparently it is still available on a streaming platform somewhere. That reminds me that I watched recently the 1973 Play for Today version of Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont with Celia Johnson is on YouTube - it's great and captures the book's ambience perfectly.
Iris Origo’s War in Val d’Orcia is brilliant and another of hers too but it was a library book and now I forgot the title. Yes, I saw her house up a windy track on a hiking holiday but too far away to detour. FewEggs also brilliant. I recently read Helen Ashton’s novel Tadpole Hall published in 1941 so, again, no one knew which way things would go. Again, from the Library stack.
I loved reading Astrid Lindgren's diaries, when they were published a while ago: fascinating view of the war from Sweden. And very much about life at home as well.
Fran - Persephone Books have published so many incredible books.... but are there any books that engage with WW2 that you wish you published but someone else beat you to it?
All three books together are very long, yet, but I suggest just one at a time! It's just really interesting and original about the impact of WW2 on people all around the world.
I’m reading Alexander Baron’s From the City, from the Plough’ about the Fufth Battalion waiting to embark for Normandy in January 1944 - I’m only about half way through. Found it difficult at first, there were so many voices and not much seemed to be happening but gradually an amazing picture of war time army life started to emerge. They are in the boats now…
Some of this book reminded me of the ‘Sword of Honour’ trilogy by Evelyn Waugh, although very different in style and much more about ordinary soldiers than officers.
Fascinating to have this tip. Just goes to show that sometimes it is worth sticking with a book that seems challenging at first (although I rarely do, I'm ashamed to say!).
Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively – This is one of my top-ten novels of all time, and won the Booker Prize. Claudia looks back over her life – including a wartime love affair – and comes to question the truthfulness of her memory.
The Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen. I read this when I was on the sleeper train up to Scotland a few years’ ago, and was so engrossed that I nearly stayed on the train on the way back to London! The train guy came and got me up and said we’d been at the station for half an hour! Definite sign of a good book…
Westwood by Stella Gibbons – Another early book club pick, featuring a dropped ration book on Hampstead Heath. A lovely story by the author of Cold Comfort Farm
Spies by Michael Frayn – one of our very first book club picks. It’s a coming-of-age novel very much inspired by LP Hartley’s The Go-Between but set in suburbia during the Second World War. Absolutely brilliant.
And, OPERATION MINCEMEAT again. As I've mentioned elsewhere, our book OPERATION HEARTBREAK was the first telling of this extraordinary story... It's an fab film - with Colin Firth and Kelly MacDonald. Anyway, these are just a few of the film adaptations of our books we've enjoyed.
The 1940s film of THEY WERE SISTERS with James Mason is ace, although they changed the ending - not sure what Dorothy Whipple would have thought of that particular artistic choice...
They have! The film of our book MISS PETTIGREW LIVES FOR A DAY, starring Frances McDormand and Amy Adams, is excellent. So is the film of our book CHEERFUL WEATHER FOR THE WEDDING with Felicity Jones. Both wonderful period comedies, beautifully done.
I have in fact seized the moment and watched Cheerful Weather for the Wedding (not least as I am off to a wedding tomorrow, so it felt like the ideal timing). I loved it! And such a star-studded cast! Thank you again for the tip.
I'm not actually the biggest fan which puts me in the minority but Elizabeth Jane Howard's Cazalet Chronicles, like Saplings, deals with an big upper-middle-class family navigating WW2 - they definitely hooked me on some level as I remember reading them all consecutively despite not adoring them which was an odd reading experience.
I really enjoy the romance novels written by Noel Streatfeild as 'Susan Scarlett' which have been reissued by Furrowed Middlebrow. I just read the wartime-set 'Summer Pudding' (1943), as a palette cleanser following the emotional devastation of Saplings. My favourite of the Susan Scarlett books so far is the pre-war 'Clothes Pegs.' Also published by Furrowed Middlebrow, I have A Chelsea Concerto by Frances Faviell on my shelf, which is a Blitz memoir and I believe one of their more sombre offerings.
Thanks for the offer to share anything cultural! Quite the challenge I might add.
I will start with the film, Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant. Apologies it is not WWII specific, as it has its setting in Afghanistan, 2018.
That said I found it to be a surreal (in the most traditional sense of the word) and mostly accurate account of the strength of bond between coalition military in AFG and their interpreters.
I’d highly recommend this as a film you’ll want to fully focus on.
No Place to Lay One’s Head by Francoise Frenkel – a thrilling escape from the Nazis through France. Not unlike our recent novel Charlotte by David Foenkinos, but with a happier outcome …
Only because you’ve mentioned Amsterdam, I’ll have to mention one other contemporary culture piece here. Ted Lasso, Season 3, Episode Title: Amsterdam. I must recommend this as one if not THE most beautiful single episode of television, in my humble opinion.
The Hare with Amber Eyes – a true story of how a maid’s quiet act of defiance saved a family’s inheritance from the Nazis…. World War Two is the climax of this extraordinary family memoir that spans a far greater time period. Highly recommend!
And some non-fiction: I am very fond of THEY CAN'T RATION THESE, a cookery book published in 1943 when everyone thought the Nazis were about to invade England and so there was a worry there'd be no food, hence this treatise about foraging eg recipes for roast hedgehog or boiled squirrel. It makes an ace present, especially for the eco-warrior in your life.
OPERATION HEARTBREAK by Duff Cooper is a novel based on the astonishing true story of efforts by British naval intelligence to conceal from the Germans preparations to invade Sicily in 1943. Author Duff Cooper is said to have first heard a version of it from Winston Churchill one evening after dinner when he was ambassador in Paris. And yes it formed the basis for the book, musical and film of OPERATION MINCEMEAT. But really it's less about war and more about what it meant to be a man in that period...
Finally read this very recently. What took me so long??!! Now a film has been made and a show in the West End “Operation Mincemeat “. Unfortunately I won’t get to see it.
Indeed. It was the first Canadian book to be on the New York best-seller list! For 37 weeks, no less. And yet, inexplicably forgotten for such a long time...
LITTLE BOY LOST by Marghanita Laski is magnificent. A thriller about a man searching for his lost son in France just after the war. It has THE most astonishing final line of ever book you'll ever read - leaves you gasping for breath.
Try Persephone's collection of short stories by Nemirovsky, too: they're not available anywhere else and are indeed to vivid about life in France in this period. We've given them the title DIMANCHE AND OTHER STORIES.
Right now I am reading The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch, a renowned virtually reality expert and Carnegie Mellon professor who was diagnosed with cancer and gave a last lecture within which he poured all the advice he had for his young children.
A dear friend bought the book for me as a going away gift.
I have cried on nearly every page I have read….I think I’m on page 23.
I am currently reading Still Life at Eighty: the next interesting thing by Abigail Thomas
Also, I have started Thomas Harding’s Blood on the Page about an infamous recent murder on Hampstead’s Downshire Hill. A bit pedantic at times – for instance, do we really need to know that the policemen left their jackets in the car before their first visit to the house? It’s set to be an extraordinary and eye-opening book, I reckon.
Recent books that I loved - The Heart's Invisible Furies, The storied life of AJ Fikry, I have some questions for you and State of Terror - sooooo good. I was pleasantly surprised.
I'm reading a book about mindfulness in french, The Fire Starter Sessions by Danielle Laporte and the Song of Ice and Fire series by George R.R. Martin (on the last book, eeek!, I foresee book hangover and grief after this one!)
Are we doing non-fiction Persephone books too? Also riveting about the Home Front is FEW EGGS AND NO ORANGES, diaries by a woman living in Notting Hill during WW2. And LONDON WAR NOTES, essays by Mollie Panter-Downes - so beautifully written and original in the view they offer of what Londoners were going through.
And our book A HOUSE IN THE COUNTRY by Jocelyn Playfair is set in 1942 around the time of the Fall of Tobruk when noone knew which way the war was going to go and hence has a extraordinary immediacy . It's about a group of people living in a country house in East Sussex together and trying to get along... it's sort of a comic novel, but with huge depth too...
I also adore TO BED WITH GRAND MUSIC by Marghanita Laski, which is a Persephone Book that flies a little under the radar. It's about a woman called Deborah who gets bored of sitting at home knitting and being brave, so moves to London and has affairs with lots of RAF airmen! It offers a completely different view of what life during the war was like for some women - surprisingly racy, it turns out!
GOOD EVENING, MRS CRAVEN by Mollie Panter-Downes is a collection of short stories originally written for the New Yorker: they are so immediate and vivid about what life was like in London during World War Two. The title story in particular comes back to me often. So many different aspects of the Home Front are covered too: sewing parties, evacuees, love affairs, etc...
Hi, everyone! Delighted that our book 'Saplings' was this month's pick. Isn't it marvellous? And so many fascinating themes.... explored in a number of other Persephone books too, of course...
Anyone late to the thread, please feel free to post your recommendations anytime! We'd love to know them.
Thank you for including me in your July book announcement. I have just bought it for my Kindle. I'm brand new to your club. I live in Stuart, Florida, USA, but this summer, we are in our RV exploring the Dakotas, Montana, and Wyoming. While searching for a new book, I found your blog & picked up one of your prior recommendations in a tiny, gorgeous western town called Red Lodge at the foot of the Beartooth mountain range on the Montana-Wyoming border. We drove up 10,000 feet and saw mountain goats. In ND and SD, we went through a herd of bison. So exciting. I want to find a gripping western tale for your club out here, written by a local, if possible. If perhaps one day you would be interested.
In the meantime, I tell you about my summer adventure because of my love for animals and history, and reading, of course. Particularly American history, WWI, WWII, and our country’s revolutionary and civil wars. (I also enjoy your country’s storied history with Ireland and your kings and queens.) So, regarding your quest for WWII stories, have you read Elephant Company by Vicki Constantine Croke? It is a beautiful non-fiction tale that reads like a novel. If your readers love WWII books, animals, or heroism, this book is a winner! Easy to read, thoughtful and historic, learn a lot about WWII, and fall in love with one of the closest loving and communicative animals to humans.
Happy and adventurous reading to you!
Thanks for sharing! No I’ve not that read one, so it’s wonderful to hear of it via your recommendation.
Curious as to which of our picks you found in the idyllic bookstore? Was it saplings? Happy adventurous reading to you too!
Hi, I’ve just joined so I was out of the loop of this month’s recommendation topic/book, but one July book was Timothy Egan’s “A Pilgrimage to Eternity: From Canterbury to Rome in Search of a Faith.” I’m a long distance walker so am curious about this hiking route. To counterbalance that creative non-fiction book, I just finished Leigh Bardugo’s fantasy novel, “Ninth House.” I’m a voracious reader of many genres so am looking forward to hearing about books to add to my “to read” list. Regarding WWII books, one of my recent favourites is “All the Light We Cannot See,” by Anthony Doerr. My fingers are crossed the upcoming adaptation is as powerful as the novel.
Thanks for sharing Joy, and lovely to have you on here!
The anthony doerr comes highly recommended by others too - see Lisa below - so glad you enjoyed it.
And re long distance walks, have you read The Salt Path by Raynor Winn? It’s brilliant!
I also just read Appointment with Venus by Jerrard Tickell set during the Nazi occupation of Sark and recently republished by Manderley Press. And there’s a b&w movie of the same name made in 1951 and available on YouTube.
I am such a fan of manderley press, thanks for highlighting!
Good afternoon and thank you for the welcome. I no longer live in London, but I still love books and I've been reading through the suggestions.
Regarding some WW2 books - too many to list, but here are two I enjoy that nobody mentioned: Marc Bloch's Strange Defeat, a non-fiction book he wrote just after the fall of France in 1940; and Flight to Arras (Pilote de guerre), by Antoine de Saint Exupéry - a slightly novelised account of his French Air Force Reconnaissance work during the Battle of France in 1940, written after he arrived in New York in 1941 and first serialised in English in The Atlantic Monthly magazine in early 1942 (it became part of the expatriate French effort to persuade the American public that entering the war in Europe was a worthy cause). Both were written when France was occupied, and by authors who never saw the end of the war - or in Bloch's case, never saw the Normandy D-Day - as both died fighting for France (St Ex left NYC in 1943 and was reintegrated in his Reconnaissance unit of the French Air Force - as attached to the US Air Force - in North Africa, then Corsica.)
July is a busy work month for me, so I tend to read light stuff when I have the time - I am enjoying Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan series, space opera with derring-do and political shenanigans, witty and well-written. I'm also reading some of the short stories in James Tiptree Jr's Her Smoke Rose Forever - they are very good! (Tiptree was the pseudonym for Alice Bradley Sheldon). I'm going through a science fiction period.
Thank you so much for sharing these - great to have your recommendations here. The saint exupery seems especially intriguing.
Thanks for all the recommendations. One lifetime is not enough…
And a couple of my favourites set in the years leading up to WW2 and the rise of fascism in Italy:
Christ Stopped at Eboli by Carlo Levi
Journey by Moonlight by Antal Szerb
And that perfect gem:
Pereira Maintains by Antonio Tabucchi
Pereira Maintains is one of my favourite books. I’ve noted the other two - I know the film of Christ Stopped at Eboli. If the book is anything as good, I’ll love it.
The book is wonderful. Not see the film!
Oh my - those first two are real favourites of mine. Ashamed not to have read the tabucchi yet … thanks for reminding me!
A very slim book - quickly read but will stay with you!
🤦♀️ No wonder I just kept going round in circles. I must do better in future. Sorry
Please don’t apologise! It IS confusing!!
Hi! New here. I recently read All The Light We Cannot See, which I am sure is not new to you, but I loved it. I also read Lilac Girls which was such an interesting take, viewed from the eyes of 3 different woman.
When do you pick a new book?
Thanks Lisa, lovely to have you on here.
Someone else has also been on at me about All the Light We Cannot See - I MUST read it!!
Our autumn programme is now up here: https://emilyswalkingbookclub.substack.com/p/announcing-our-autumn-2023-line-up
Looking forward to sharing these books with you!
Do you know Handheld Press’s “where stands a wingèd sentry” by MargareKennedy? And the books of Frances Faviell?
No - I must investigate! thank you so much for the tips
Those were off the top of my head but I know there are also novels. Did I miss live online discussion or was it Q&A like this? Thanks
The whole thing is a live typing Q&A.
No zoom - that happens on monday evenings once a month.
The idea is we have a manic half hour of typing. People can also add recommendations afterwards. And then it's all here preserved for us to refer back to, when we need inspiration for something to read / watch etc.
Thank you for joining. Hopefully see you next time too! And do please share your novel tips here when you have a chance. I'd love to know them.
Ancient being the right word!
I also just wanted to mention a few great new books I've reviewed over the past couple of weeks:
Second Self by Chloe Ashby in the Spectator:
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/picture-study-second-self-by-chloe-ashby-reviewed/
And Brotherless Night by VV Ganeshananthan also in the Speccie
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/terrorists-you-might-know-or-love-brotherless-night-by-v-v-ganeshananthan-reviewed/
Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein in the FT Weekend:
https://www.ft.com/content/2976f96d-b41b-4394-b3d4-9f85c3a12c12
Thank you to everyone else who has joined so far:
Mari
Julia
Bob
Michael
Barbara
Wonderful to have your thoughts and recommendations.
Thank you for the lovely opportunity!
Hi Emily,
Did I misunderstand that the discussion is online just now? None of the links/emails lead to me to Zoom or other online live discussion. I seem to have wasted my time trying to find it. Will there be a recording? My first attempt to comment disappeared when I looked back to previous messages. My comment would be how much I prefer works written during the second world war when no one knew the outcome or how long it would take. I’m afraid I don’t think I can go through 88 previous comments so probably others have suggested titles. Thank you. Sorry to miss you. Best wishes, Barbara
Hello Babara, I'm so sorry for any confusion!
Thank you very much for persevering.
That is so interesting to hear your thoughts about books written during the war rather than after... Any titles in particular that you'd recommend?
Thank you so much Fran for sharing your expertise with the group. I expect we will all go straight to Persephone Books for our summer reading!!
Hurrah! Thanks for having me, Emily.
I would love to give another shout out here for a book totally not to do with WW2, but just published:
Attention Seekers by Emma Brankin, one of our walkers. It was wonderful to see some of you at her book launch the other evening.
Fran - final question for you:
And it's a hard one...
What are your top 3 Persephone titles?
Though one of our upcoming books we are publishing this October will, I'm confident, become a favourite too. But I can't tell you anything more about it than that!
Everyone is on tenterhooks!
Well of course I don’t have a favourite Persephone Book just like I don’t have a favourite child, BUT… some of the titles of which I’m fondest include THE HOME-MAKER, THE CALL, THEY WERE SISTERS, TO BED WITH GRAND MUSIC, and our newest, ONE AFTERNOON, a 1975 love story by a Welsh writer named Siàn James. (Sorry, that's more than 3!).
This is wonderful Fran, thank you!
A few minutes left...
Oh, and Nella Last's wartime diaries and the TV drama with Victoria Wood - absolutely wonderful.
Great!
Thumbs up for Iris Origo (stood outside her old house Tuscany a few years ago), Suite Francaise and A Few Eggs and No Oranges! For a totally different perspective A German Officer in Occupied Paris, the war journals 1941-45 of Ernst Junger is completely fascinating.
Does anyone remember A Family at War, an ITV series about a family in wartime Liverpool? It ran in the early 70s and I found it completely compelling. Apparently it is still available on a streaming platform somewhere. That reminds me that I watched recently the 1973 Play for Today version of Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont with Celia Johnson is on YouTube - it's great and captures the book's ambience perfectly.
Iris Origo’s War in Val d’Orcia is brilliant and another of hers too but it was a library book and now I forgot the title. Yes, I saw her house up a windy track on a hiking holiday but too far away to detour. FewEggs also brilliant. I recently read Helen Ashton’s novel Tadpole Hall published in 1941 so, again, no one knew which way things would go. Again, from the Library stack.
Family at War? Yes! I remember being totally absorbed into the lives of the characters….
Thanks so much for sharing these...
And bringing your ancient wisdom of 1970s TV to the thread.
Both sound great!
Hello Michael!
Does anyone have any great TV recs about the Second World War?
Here at Persephone we are gripped by WORLD ON FIRE. Though it is very harrowing.
Yes, I must watch this!
I have fond childhood memories of things that were probably really not funny but seemed hilarious at the time:
Dad's Army
Allo allo
I loved reading Astrid Lindgren's diaries, when they were published a while ago: fascinating view of the war from Sweden. And very much about life at home as well.
Oh, yes! And Tove Jansson’s letters both from Scandinavian perspective. Both wonderful writers.
Fran - Persephone Books have published so many incredible books.... but are there any books that engage with WW2 that you wish you published but someone else beat you to it?
Thinking. The Balkan Trilogy by Olivia Manning, maybe.
Isn't it unbelievably long? Remembering it taking up an entire shelf in the bookshop... or maybe I've misremembered.
All three books together are very long, yet, but I suggest just one at a time! It's just really interesting and original about the impact of WW2 on people all around the world.
I’m reading Alexander Baron’s From the City, from the Plough’ about the Fufth Battalion waiting to embark for Normandy in January 1944 - I’m only about half way through. Found it difficult at first, there were so many voices and not much seemed to be happening but gradually an amazing picture of war time army life started to emerge. They are in the boats now…
Some of this book reminded me of the ‘Sword of Honour’ trilogy by Evelyn Waugh, although very different in style and much more about ordinary soldiers than officers.
I'm ashamed to admit not having read those particular Waughs. But I loved Brideshead (of course) both in book and tv form.
Picking up on Barbara's point - Brideshead was written during WW2, and I think the rationing influenced his rather OTT lavish descriptions of food !
It’s actually the Fifth battalion… I can’t type…
Fascinating to have this tip. Just goes to show that sometimes it is worth sticking with a book that seems challenging at first (although I rarely do, I'm ashamed to say!).
Hello Mari - thanks for joining!
I'm going to list here a few excellent novels that have WW2 going on in the background:
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro is brilliant too.
Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively – This is one of my top-ten novels of all time, and won the Booker Prize. Claudia looks back over her life – including a wartime love affair – and comes to question the truthfulness of her memory.
The Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen. I read this when I was on the sleeper train up to Scotland a few years’ ago, and was so engrossed that I nearly stayed on the train on the way back to London! The train guy came and got me up and said we’d been at the station for half an hour! Definite sign of a good book…
Westwood by Stella Gibbons – Another early book club pick, featuring a dropped ration book on Hampstead Heath. A lovely story by the author of Cold Comfort Farm
Spies by Michael Frayn – one of our very first book club picks. It’s a coming-of-age novel very much inspired by LP Hartley’s The Go-Between but set in suburbia during the Second World War. Absolutely brilliant.
Love that book!
Fran - we love Persephone Books in their smart grey jackets. Have any of them been adapted to films that you'd particularly recommend?
And, OPERATION MINCEMEAT again. As I've mentioned elsewhere, our book OPERATION HEARTBREAK was the first telling of this extraordinary story... It's an fab film - with Colin Firth and Kelly MacDonald. Anyway, these are just a few of the film adaptations of our books we've enjoyed.
Thank you so much for these Fran - perfect for when I don't know what to watch one Sunday evening.
There was also a French adaptation of our book THE NEW MAGDALEN by Wilkie Collins called 'Secret Name'. But I haven't had a chance to see it yet.
The 1940s film of THEY WERE SISTERS with James Mason is ace, although they changed the ending - not sure what Dorothy Whipple would have thought of that particular artistic choice...
And the film of INTO THE WHIRLWIND is extremely moving: it's called WITHIN THE WHIRLWIND and features Emily Watson.
They have! The film of our book MISS PETTIGREW LIVES FOR A DAY, starring Frances McDormand and Amy Adams, is excellent. So is the film of our book CHEERFUL WEATHER FOR THE WEDDING with Felicity Jones. Both wonderful period comedies, beautifully done.
I can't believe I've missed these! Such a fan of these actors, and books!
Both the above are genuinely wonderful - perfect for a cosy Sunday afternoon.
I have in fact seized the moment and watched Cheerful Weather for the Wedding (not least as I am off to a wedding tomorrow, so it felt like the ideal timing). I loved it! And such a star-studded cast! Thank you again for the tip.
I'm not actually the biggest fan which puts me in the minority but Elizabeth Jane Howard's Cazalet Chronicles, like Saplings, deals with an big upper-middle-class family navigating WW2 - they definitely hooked me on some level as I remember reading them all consecutively despite not adoring them which was an odd reading experience.
I really enjoy the romance novels written by Noel Streatfeild as 'Susan Scarlett' which have been reissued by Furrowed Middlebrow. I just read the wartime-set 'Summer Pudding' (1943), as a palette cleanser following the emotional devastation of Saplings. My favourite of the Susan Scarlett books so far is the pre-war 'Clothes Pegs.' Also published by Furrowed Middlebrow, I have A Chelsea Concerto by Frances Faviell on my shelf, which is a Blitz memoir and I believe one of their more sombre offerings.
Ah! I now see that the Faviell book was already mentioned. Also, I second your Susan Scarlett suggestions too, Julia
Hello Julia, lovely to see you here
I was also thinking of recommending the Cazalets .... although I actually preferred EJH's memoir Slipstream. She had one hell of a life!
I do remember reading all those Cazalet books when I was a teenager and they came out and being quite seduced by it all...
I'm not sure why I don't adore them as everyone else seems to! Addictive, though.
Thanks for the offer to share anything cultural! Quite the challenge I might add.
I will start with the film, Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant. Apologies it is not WWII specific, as it has its setting in Afghanistan, 2018.
That said I found it to be a surreal (in the most traditional sense of the word) and mostly accurate account of the strength of bond between coalition military in AFG and their interpreters.
I’d highly recommend this as a film you’ll want to fully focus on.
Ah thank you! Doesn't need to be on this month's theme, if you've come across it over the past month. That's a great share.
Three non-fiction works that I've loved that engage with the Second World War are:
No Place to Lay One’s Head by Francoise Frenkel – a thrilling escape from the Nazis through France. Not unlike our recent novel Charlotte by David Foenkinos, but with a happier outcome …
Oh yes. I was late reading Charlotte. Harrowing
The Cut Out Girl by Bart Van Es – absolutely brilliant, moving account of the War in the Netherlands.
Only because you’ve mentioned Amsterdam, I’ll have to mention one other contemporary culture piece here. Ted Lasso, Season 3, Episode Title: Amsterdam. I must recommend this as one if not THE most beautiful single episode of television, in my humble opinion.
That is quite a plug! Thank you.
The Hare with Amber Eyes – a true story of how a maid’s quiet act of defiance saved a family’s inheritance from the Nazis…. World War Two is the climax of this extraordinary family memoir that spans a far greater time period. Highly recommend!
And a previous book club pick!
Likewise on my shelf, waiting for me:
The Unwomanly Face of War by the Nobel Prize winner, Svetlana Alexievich. It is supposed to be absolutely brilliant – has anyone here read it?
One walker recommends:
War in Val D'Orcia by Iris Origo.
This one's sitting on my shelf waiting to be read. Anyone else here recommend it?
Another question for Fran:
Fran - how about some Persephone Books that engage with other aspects of the Second World War.
One more non-fiction: ON THE OTHER SIDE which are letters written by a mother in Hamburg 1940-6 to her children. Encourages all our empathy.
Brilliant!
And some non-fiction: I am very fond of THEY CAN'T RATION THESE, a cookery book published in 1943 when everyone thought the Nazis were about to invade England and so there was a worry there'd be no food, hence this treatise about foraging eg recipes for roast hedgehog or boiled squirrel. It makes an ace present, especially for the eco-warrior in your life.
Oh god. Wasn't there a thing recently about putting grey squirrel on the menu? I feel like I debated it with my kids as it was in The Week Junior...
OPERATION HEARTBREAK by Duff Cooper is a novel based on the astonishing true story of efforts by British naval intelligence to conceal from the Germans preparations to invade Sicily in 1943. Author Duff Cooper is said to have first heard a version of it from Winston Churchill one evening after dinner when he was ambassador in Paris. And yes it formed the basis for the book, musical and film of OPERATION MINCEMEAT. But really it's less about war and more about what it meant to be a man in that period...
Finally read this very recently. What took me so long??!! Now a film has been made and a show in the West End “Operation Mincemeat “. Unfortunately I won’t get to see it.
This is one I’ll have to pick up!
I'm so intrigued, thanks!
OPERATION HEARTBREAK is also a v short novel, which in my view is always a bonus. Fits perfectly in a coat pocket or a Christmas stocking.
And EARTH AND HIGH HEAVEN - which deals with anti-semitism, but in Canada.
Indeed. It was the first Canadian book to be on the New York best-seller list! For 37 weeks, no less. And yet, inexplicably forgotten for such a long time...
I remember LITTLE BOY LOST as a really good one
One of my very favourite Persephones.
LITTLE BOY LOST by Marghanita Laski is magnificent. A thriller about a man searching for his lost son in France just after the war. It has THE most astonishing final line of ever book you'll ever read - leaves you gasping for breath.
As soon as this thread is over I'm going to grab it off my shelf and reread that last line!!
The thing is, the last line of LBL only works in the context of the whole novel - so, no skipping!
I have read it before! Promise I'm not cheating...
Sarah says:
I really enjoyed Ysenda Maxtone Graham’s British Summer Time Begins, which is a fabulous summer read.
I am a big Ysenda MG fan - has anyone else here read her books? Terms & Conditions about life in girls' boarding schools especially good I think!
Love all her recent books. Some published by Slightly Foxed (which I also highly recommend)
Hey Folks! Bob Marcus here. I am admittedly new to Substack and haven’t quite figured out how to navigate.
Emily, is this the “live discussion” you were referencing between 130-2?
Please feel free to share anything cultural you've been enjoying this month - books, films, tv etc...
And also anything that engages with The Second World War, especially the Home Front.
Hello - thanks so much for joining.
Yes!
On our walk, and on theme, Tom recommended Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky - a book that's been recommended previously too!
Try Persephone's collection of short stories by Nemirovsky, too: they're not available anywhere else and are indeed to vivid about life in France in this period. We've given them the title DIMANCHE AND OTHER STORIES.
A few new joiners would like to recommend what they've been reading:
Bob:
Right now I am reading The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch, a renowned virtually reality expert and Carnegie Mellon professor who was diagnosed with cancer and gave a last lecture within which he poured all the advice he had for his young children.
A dear friend bought the book for me as a going away gift.
I have cried on nearly every page I have read….I think I’m on page 23.
Sandy:
I am currently reading Still Life at Eighty: the next interesting thing by Abigail Thomas
Also, I have started Thomas Harding’s Blood on the Page about an infamous recent murder on Hampstead’s Downshire Hill. A bit pedantic at times – for instance, do we really need to know that the policemen left their jackets in the car before their first visit to the house? It’s set to be an extraordinary and eye-opening book, I reckon.
Rochelle:
Recent books that I loved - The Heart's Invisible Furies, The storied life of AJ Fikry, I have some questions for you and State of Terror - sooooo good. I was pleasantly surprised.
Anick:
I'm reading a book about mindfulness in french, The Fire Starter Sessions by Danielle Laporte and the Song of Ice and Fire series by George R.R. Martin (on the last book, eeek!, I foresee book hangover and grief after this one!)
Hello Fran - would you like to start by suggesting a few other Persephone Books that explore life on The Home Front?
Are we doing non-fiction Persephone books too? Also riveting about the Home Front is FEW EGGS AND NO ORANGES, diaries by a woman living in Notting Hill during WW2. And LONDON WAR NOTES, essays by Mollie Panter-Downes - so beautifully written and original in the view they offer of what Londoners were going through.
Why not?! Wonderful reading list you are making for us...
And our book A HOUSE IN THE COUNTRY by Jocelyn Playfair is set in 1942 around the time of the Fall of Tobruk when noone knew which way the war was going to go and hence has a extraordinary immediacy . It's about a group of people living in a country house in East Sussex together and trying to get along... it's sort of a comic novel, but with huge depth too...
I also adore TO BED WITH GRAND MUSIC by Marghanita Laski, which is a Persephone Book that flies a little under the radar. It's about a woman called Deborah who gets bored of sitting at home knitting and being brave, so moves to London and has affairs with lots of RAF airmen! It offers a completely different view of what life during the war was like for some women - surprisingly racy, it turns out!
Yes - I think Julia (who might be here soon) also loves this book.
(Laski's book THE VILLAGE is ace too about the Home Front in the months immediately after the war - the struggle to adjust to peacetime life, etc.
Francesca, any chance this would help someone with PTSD who still has trouble acclimating to life outside the war zone?
Not trying to tempt you into becoming a clinical psychologist, just asking your personal opinion.
Absolutely.
Though, there are so many to choose from!
GOOD EVENING, MRS CRAVEN by Mollie Panter-Downes is a collection of short stories originally written for the New Yorker: they are so immediate and vivid about what life was like in London during World War Two. The title story in particular comes back to me often. So many different aspects of the Home Front are covered too: sewing parties, evacuees, love affairs, etc...
Fascinating. I think my father-in-law loves this book!
Hi, everyone! Delighted that our book 'Saplings' was this month's pick. Isn't it marvellous? And so many fascinating themes.... explored in a number of other Persephone books too, of course...
I'm thrilled to be joined by Francesca Beauman of Persephone Books, who'll be sharing her expertise - holler when you're here Fran!
Welcome to the thread everyone!