Notts through a literary lens. Next in the series is the 1940s:
1940
To Church on Sunday by Geoffrey Palmer (1940)
Edwinstowe born Geoffrey Palmer (1912–2005) was a member of
Edwinstowe’s well-known Rabbitt family. Educated in Notts he became a teacher
here until becoming a Conscientious Objector in the war. Forming his own small
theatre group, he soon met his partner, the actor Noel Lloyd. Palmer’s only
adult novel, To Church on Sunday, was published by Chapman and Hall in 1940. He
went on to have a prolific writing career with Lloyd. Their books consisted of
adventure and ghost stories as well as many works of non-fiction. In the early
60s they wrote three children’s books set in the Sherwood Forest area
(Edwinstowe becomes Edwinston). Palmer later returned to teaching before
retiring to become a bookseller.
Immediately after Nottingham entered World War II cinemas
across the country were forced to close their doors and become dark. That
suspension was lifted after the importance of keeping the cinemas open was
realised. At this time two more screens were being built in Nottingham, taking
our number of separate cinemas up to 52, a record high (to this day). It was in
1940 that Sunday openings were permitted for the first time despite concerns
that Sabbath screenings would harm the moral fibre of the population and reduce
the number of churchgoers.
1941
The Long Walk by Słavomir Rawicz (1956)
Slavomir Rawicz escaped from a Russian gulag camp in 1941.
He was one of seven escapees that made their way from Siberia to British India,
by way of China, the Gobi Desert, Tibet and the Himalayas. This incredible
journey was told in the 2010 film The Way Back and, earlier, in Rawicz’s
ghost-written book The Long Walk. The memoir is an epic tale of physical and
mental resilience; a 4,000-mile walk, living off the land in a harsh
environment. By the time he was rescued Rawicz weighed just 5 stone. After the
war he settled in Nottingham, one of thousands of Polish people to make a life
here. He worked as a school handicraft and woodwork instructor, and a cabinet
maker, later to be employed by the Nottingham building and design centre,
before becoming a technician at Trent Poly (Nottingham Trent University). His
wife Marjorie, a librarian who had helped with the book, assisted ‘Slav’ in
answering the many letters he continued to receive from admirers. The Long
Walk, never out of print, has sold half a million copies.
It was about nine o’clock one bleak November day that they
key rattled in the heavy lock of my cell in the Lubyanka Prison and the two
broad-shouldered guards marched purposefully in. (from The Long Walk)
The Nottingham Poetry
Society was founded originally as the Nottingham Branch of the Poetry
Society of London. It was in 1941 that Margery Smith wrote to the society in
London requesting the names of members living in the Nottingham area. She then
met with three other women to form the Nottingham branch. The Society met on
Friar Lane once a month. Annual Subscription was one guinea, a fee that
included issues of Poetry Review. The Nottingham Poetry Society continues to
thrive, holding a variety of events throughout the year, including slam
competitions, workshops, readings and lectures. In 2011, the society published
an anthology marking their 70th anniversary.
1942
One Small Candle by Cecil Roberts (1942)
During the war Cecil Roberts worked for Lord Halifax, the
British Ambassador in Washington, and he gave speeches on behalf of the British
Government, whilst still managing to have several books published. His 1942
novel, One Small Candle, is about a
gifted and lucky young playwright with a strong desire to travel. The
protagonist leaves an idyllic Henley-on Thames to live, love and see the world
after a generous offer arrives from Hollywood. It was described by The New York
Times as ‘a book that keeps you entertained and never throws you out of
balance’.
At the age of twenty-seven Roberts had been England’s
youngest daily newspaper editor. This was at the Nottingham Journal on
Parliament Street.
John Gielgud appeared as Macbeth at Nottingham’s Theatre
Royal as part of a 1942 tour of the play. Gielgud had volunteered for active
service at the start of the war but was told that, at thirty-five, he was not
required at that time. The government then decided that professional actors
would be better used performing for the troops and general public than on
active duty. Critics said that Gielgud was not up to playing the Scottish
general whilst the actor himself conceded that he could not achieve the
“ruthless energetic quality” required of the role.
During this tour of Macbeth
the costume and set designer committed suicide, and a further three actors died
- and they say the play’s cursed.
1943
They Were Sisters by Dorothy Whipple (1943)
This the story of three sisters, the different marital
choices they make and how those choices impact on them; all set in an era when
women stuck in a bad marriage had little or no option of reprieve. Whipple’s
writing has aged well; her characters well-drawn and recognisable. They Were
Sisters is an authentic account of domestic middle-class life with a menacing
undertone that holds attention.
Moral failure or spiritual failure or whatever you call it,
makes such a vicious circle... It seems as if when we love people and they fall
short, we retaliate by falling shorter ourselves. (from They Were Sisters)
Alma Reville
co-wrote the 1943 psychological thriller Shadow
of a Doubt, a screenplay described by the New York Times as ‘a graphic and
affectionate outline of a small-town American family’. Reville was born in
Nottingham in 1899, a few hours after her future husband and collaborator
Alfred Hitchcock was born in Leytonstone. It was in 1925, on a stormy boat
journey back from Munich, that lovesick Hitchcock proposed to seasick Reville.
She later said, ‘It was the first time I had ever seen him in a state of
disorder, and the last time too. His hair had been blown about by the wind and
his clothes had been soaked with ocean spray.’
1944
SAS Operation Galia by Rob Hann (2009)
In SAS Operation Galia
Nottingham author Rob Hann describes his father’s experiences as a paratrooper
dropped behind the lines in Italy, two days after the Christmas of 1944 during
the harshest of winters. Drawing on post-op reports and memoirs, this Impress
Prize winning book is a fictionalised account of the operation, one of the
hardest fought and most successful operations of the Second World War. Well
researched and richly illustrated, Hann's personal narrative brings to life the
co-ordinated attempts of the SAS and local partisans to engage and evade the
enemy.
A sixteen-year-old Edmund
Ward left home in 1944. Ward’s mother had died when he was six leading to
an unhappy domestic life which he was glad to escape. A talented and
prize-winning schoolboy, Ward was denied the chance of a job at the Nottingham
Post because they only paid 15 shillings a week. Instead he was obliged to take
a book-keepers role at Boots – his father’s employers – for double the wage. He
hated the work and took time off to read every book in his local library, a
feat achieved by his twentieth birthday. Nottingham born Ward later moved to
Sweden. He wrote seven novels including Summer in Retreat, The Gravy Train and The
Private Tightrope, and his screenplays created some of the most popular
television dramas of the ‘60s and ‘70s.
1945
The Escape by Clare
Harvey (2018)
In a winter morning of 1945 a translator for a Nazi-run
labour camp for French workers passes a group of exhausted prisoners of war
marching westward. The following day she receives an urgent message to contact
the local priest who is harbouring a group of escapees. Can she help? Published
later this year (2018), The Escape is another mix of secrets, drama and
relationships, as Clare Harvey continues to meld thrilling historical fiction
with real-life characters and events. The author lives in Nottingham and
completed a MA course in creative writing at the University of Nottingham.
The year sees a film version of Mapperley Park resident Dorothy Whipple’s novel They Were Sisters. With its all-star
British cast, the film was voted one of the four best films of the year. The
sisters are played by Phyllis Calvert (as Lucy), Dulcie Gray (as Charlotte) and
Anne Crawford (as Vera). Of the different men pursuing them it is James Mason
who lands the role of Geoffrey, the ambitious and cruel businessman wanting a
stay-at-home trophy wife. The film is noted for its harrowing depiction of
marital abuse.
1946
The Day is Ours by
Hilda Lewis
Former teacher Hilda Lewis began writing after she arrived
in Nottingham in the 1920s. Her 1946 novel The Day is Ours concerns the life of
a young deaf girl and the affects her condition has on her family as they
struggle to give her a better life. The book was inspired by the work of her
husband Professor M. Michael Lewis who was a specialist in the education of the
deaf at the University of Nottingham. The
Day is Ours was adapted as the film Mandy, described as ‘the greatest
emotional drama yet brought to the screen’.
The Nottingham Co-op bought a chapel on George Street where it
founded the Co-operative Arts Theatre in 1946. The need for the theatre had
come after the Choral, Operatic and Drama groups had outgrown their previous
venue at Co-op House. When the Co-operative Wholesale Society intended to close
the theatre - in 1999 - a theatre group started a campaign to buy the building.
With help from Nottingham City Council and the Broadway Media Centre the asking
price was met. The small theatre in the Lace Market remains active. Now called
Nottingham Arts Theatre, this pink building is home to an educational charity
which still provides opportunities for all within performing arts.
1947
Eight for Eternity by Cecil Roberts
Published in 1947, Eight for Eternity is one of Cecil
Roberts’ more accessible reads. A Freeman of Nottingham, Roberts spent his
later years living in Italy, and Monte Cassino is the setting for this story of
war. The world wars have ripped apart cities and families, and peace cannot
repair the destruction. Roberts reflects on the meaning of life and the nature
of death. Told with flashbacks Eight for Eternity explores guilt and
spirituality at a time when the world is processing great loss.
It was in 1947 that Stephen
Lowe was born in Sneinton. The son of a labourer and a machinist, Stephen
grew up in a neighbourhood of back-to-back housing before his family moved up
in the world, to the high-rise flats of Manvers Court. A love of the theatre grew
from his joining the youth group at the new Co-operative Arts Theatre, a place
he enjoyed so much he was known to sleep there at weekends. The actor, director
and artistic director but is perhaps best-known as a playwright (Touched, The Spirit of the Man, Glamour),
but he has also written extensively for film and TV, including a hundred
episodes of Coronation Street. Stephen Lowe is the President of Nottingham
UNESCO City of Literature.
1948
1948 by Andy Croft (2012)
Echoing George Orwell's Nineteen
Eighty-Four, Croft’s comic verse-novel is set during the 1948 London
Olympics. It’s a radical alternate history of the Cold War, in which Britain
rebuilds under a Labour-Communist coalition government. In Croft’s vision the
Royal Family has fled to Rhodesia and the US threatens to impose an economic
blockade on Britain. Featuring illustrations by Martin Rowson, 1948 combines the hard-boiled detective
novels with Pushkin sonnetry, film-noir and Ealing comedy.
It was a bright cold
day in April. Oh no it wasn’t – for a start I cannot find a rhyme for April…
(from 1948 by Andy Croft)
In 1948 University College Nottingham was awarded the Royal
Charter becoming The University of Nottingham, Britain's first post-war
university, and now able to award degrees in its own name. Today, University of Nottingham is
consistently ranked amongst the world's top 100 universities and has over
43,000 students from 150 countries.
______
Miranda Seymour,
novelist, biographer and critic, was born in 1948. Seymour began writing as a
historical novelist, moving from fiction into biography during the 1980s with
her remarkable group portrait of Henry James and his literary circle: A Ring of
Conspirators.
Also born in this year was Max Blagg. The Retford born poet, writer and performer is an
established and respected figure on the New York literary scene, the city in
which he’s lived since 1971. In the last two years Blagg has raised the dead in
a series of interviews with famous deceased celebrities.
1949
No Boats on Bannermere (1949) by Geoffrey Trease
No Boats on Bannermere
the first of Trease’s five Bannerdale novels set in Cumberland, in the Lake
District. The author’s daughter and her friends requested he write a ‘modern’
story about boys and girls who went to day schools rather than the usual
boarding school stories they were given to read. In the book, Bill (the
narrator), his practical sister Sue, and their mother move to the Lake
District. Finances are tight and the children must start their new school which
means making friends with the locals. The title is in reference to the
character Sir Alfred Askew, owner of Bannermere Hall, who allows no boats on
the lake. The kids investigate why?
The iconic Nottingham entertainer Su Pollard was born in 1949. Our Su is a patron of the Nottingham
based group New Writers UK.
1900-02, 1903-05, 1906-08, 1909-11, 1912-14, 1915-17, 1918-20, 1921-23, 1924-26, 1927-29, 1930-32, 1933-35, 1936-38, 1939-41, 1942-44, 1945-47, 1948-50, 1951-53, 1954-56, 1957-59, 1960, 1961-63, 1964-66, 1967-69, 1970-72, 1973-75, 1976-78, 1979-81, 1982-84, 1985-87, 1988-1990, 1991-93, 1994-96, 1997-99
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