I'm one of the punters involved, asked about such things as The Joy of Sex and the Doctor's reacting vibrator (yes, really).
The Savages sees the departure of companion Steven Taylor, played by Peter Purves. You can find out what happened to him next in the audio stories The War to End All Wars, The Founding Fathers and The Locked Room.
Each episode begins with Alex retelling a Greek myth - Echo and Narcissus in episode 1, Orpheus and Eurydice in episode 2 - before going on to explore its cultural influence into the modern day.
"'If this were a detective story, he'd be the murderer for a certainty, though,' said Barnes. 'They always pick on the benevolent elderly gent, because you'll never think it could be him!''Ah, but nowadays they're more subtle; they know that the reader's wise to that trick and the older and more benevolent a character is, the more he'll be suspected.'
'Perhaps it's gone all the way round and come back full cycle,' suggested Barnes, laughing; 'and elderly gents and paralytics in bath chairs are suspects number one all over again because the reader doesn't think the author would be so obvious. Anyway, this isn't a detective story, and it certainly wasn't old Moon.'
'So that leaves you and me and the three girls,' said Eden, grinning sardonically. 'A charming alternative.'" (p. 216)
My good friend Father Christmas added this to my Mum's stocking based on the blurb, thinking it a suitable present for a former nurse who likes a murder mystery. My Mum's first reaction was, "Oh, I knew her." In 1971-72, my late Dad was a joint junior registrar at Mount Vernon and Middlesex hospitals, working under Brand's husband, the surgeon Roland Lewis.
First published in 1944, Green for Danger involves victims of air raids in 1943 being brought into a military hospital in Kent, where someone bumps off a number of patients and staff. A film version was released in 1946, directed by Sidney Gilliat and starring Alistair Sim as Inspector Cockrill, with action moved forward a year to 1944 and the V-1 offensive, presumably for greater cinematic impact.
The book begins with postman Joseph Higgins pushing his old, red bicycle towards the new Heron's Park hospital to deliver seven letters. They're all from new members of staff and we get a quick glimpse of each character before being told that one of them will, a year later, murder this poor postman.
In Chapter II, we jump forward a year and are quickly caught up in the bustling, bantering hospital on the night of an air raid. The local ARP centre and a pub have been hit, so lots of patients are coming in, wounded and grimy and scared. At the same time, we get more details of stuff going on under the surface - the staff's love affairs and unrequited passions, their terror of the air raids, the people they've already lost.
Higgins is brought in with a fractured femur, the sole survivor of the ARP Centre. The doctors decide to operate. Higgins and his wife are both nervous but are assured it's a routine procedure. In he goes to theatre, our seven suspects all on duty. By the end of Chapter III he is dead.
At first it seems that no one is to blame - sometimes these things just happen in theatre. Inspector Cockrill is called in as a matter of routine. But he starts to suspect that something more sinister has gone on and then someone else is murdered...
It all moves along breathlessly and the different characters are well drawn, with some suspenseful moments such as when another man goes into theatre with the same suspects on duty, plus the Inspector watching them. The air raids and murder make for a tense setting anyway, and there's something a bit naughty in the staff's complex romantic intrigues, their efforts to solve the mystery for themselves and the games they play with the police officers assigned to watch them.
Cockrill deduces who the killer is fairly early on but requires more evidence before he can confront them, which is effectively a challenge to the reader to work out what he has spotted from the clues given so far. On more than one occasion, things don't go as he expects - putting lives in danger.
Brand keeps us guessing skilfully. There are some fantastic twists at we rattle towards the conclusion - one section ends with a character springing forward to attack and we think they are the killer exposed. In the next, brief section, the Inspector intercedes to stop this person and then arrests someone else. "Oh, it's them!" we respond to the sudden attack. And then, almost immediately, "Oh, no, it's them!"
In the closing chapter, the survivors compare notes and look towards the future. There are still further twists in the tale. One character seems to be proposing to another - and then it's clear that they aren't. The other character, hopes dashed,
"stuck our her chin, made a little joke, and nobody knew there was anything wrong at all." (p. 255)
We leave them, laughing and talking, for all we are haunted by the trouble we know lies just under the surface.
Shirin will read her book Zahra’s Blessing - A Ramadan Story, and we'll talk about that and her other work. There will be an opportunity for attendees to ask questions.
The blurb for the event says:
Shirin Shamsi is an award-winning author of children’s books. Born and raised in the United Kingdom to Pakistani immigrants, she moved to the USA with her husband, over thirty years ago, where they have raised three children. Now empty nesters, they live with their cat Bramble in the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois.
With a background in Early Childhood, children have always been Shirin’s priority and focus. She writes with the hope that every child will see themselves represented in books. Having lived on three continents, Shirin sees herself as a global citizen. She feels passionately about sharing stories that represent global themes and diversity; stories that inspire curiosity, compassion, kindness, and empathy.
This is the third Macfest I've been part of. Last year I interviewed Seti Atta about her novel A Bit of Difference. The year before, I interviewed Fatima Manji about her book Hidden Histories.
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| Director Jon Clarke and camera op Lewis Hobson on Ealing High Street where Autons once invaded |
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| Presenter Matthew Sweet on the corner of Ealing Broadway and Ealing High Street, outside the Autons' favourite branch of M&S |
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| Jon and Lewis line up a shot with Matthew |
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| Lewis, Jon, expert guest Alex Moore, Matthew Sweet and me (Photo by Kitty Dunning) |
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| Me looming in the foreground while the team interview Dr Adam Scovell outside Ealing Film Studios |
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| Dr Adam Scovell and Matthew Sweet at Ealing Film Studios |
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| Nice Vibez, Lime Grove |
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| Jon records Subhadra Das and Matthew Sweet in Chiswick |
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| Subhadra and Matthew in Chiswick |
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| Jon records Matthew's reaction shot in front of a brick wall |
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| Matthew and Jon in front of the Palace of Westminster, the south side of the river popular with alien invasions |
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| Matthew and Dr Rupa Huq, MP at Portcullis House |
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| Jon and Matthew in front of Elizabeth Tower |
Lady Milton was, some years previously, the victim of an outrageous theft, when a painting by Turner was stolen almost out from under her nose by a young woman she employed. Brodie is hired by a completely unrelated family to trace the theft of a completely unrelated painting... by a young woman who is not what she seemed.
I thought the previous outing for Brodie, Big Sky, took a while to get going and was a bit unsubtle about its targets. This is much better at getting things going from the off, while many of the characters here and their motivations are not what they first appear.
Brodie is now in his 60s and a grandfather, but still the sardonic tough-guy of previous outings. The returning characters include Reggie Chase, the teenage orphan introduced in the third Brodie novel, When Will There Be Good News? and now a serving police officer - who takes pride in being mistaken for Brodie's daughter. New characters include a troubled vicar, Simon, who has lost his voice and his belief in God. There's also a beekeeper called Ben, who lost his leg to an IED while on active duty and is now a bit lost himself.
It's a funny and wry, and kept me guessing until the end. The final act, which involves the murder mystery evening where there's also a real dead body and an escaped convict with a gun, is tense and suspenseful while also a glorious farce. The mix of comedy and pathos gives some heft to what might otherwise by a daft runaround. The result is a very satisfying joy.
See also me on the five previous Jackson Brodie novels: Case Histories; One Good Turn; When Will There Be Good News?; Started Early, Took My Dog; Big Sky. And me on Kate Atkinson's other novels: Transcription; Shrines of Gaiety.
I’d not heard of her before but, looking up details, Edith’s great-grandfather was George Guerrier (1771-1824), my direct ancestor — my grandfather’s grandfather’s grandfather. My grandfather’s grandfather, William George Guerrier (1827-1920) was the cousin of Edith’s father, George.
Edith wrote an autobiography under the title A Little Woman of New England, which was published as An Independent Woman in 1992. It’s about how, from modest beginnings, she set up a series of clubs for girls, largely from Italian and Jewish immigrant families. That leads to a long career with Boston Library, included a nine-year campaign to get a Bill passed into law. She meets various famous people such as Louisa May Alcott (hence the original title of this autobiography) and some US politicians who would later be president. It’s an evocative story and full of great historical detail.
There’s not a lot of detail about her 40-year relationship with Edith Brown, though a couple of things, I think, are telling.
The first meeting with Edith Brown and their setting up home together are described in a chapter titled “A Single Woman”. They’re clearly a close partnership from the off, a duo. In that sense, at least, Edith Guerrier isn’t single. The title is consciously ironic.
Then there’s the following comment towards the end of the book, where Edith Guerrier speaks of her retirement from Boston City Library, mandated when she turns 70:
“In looking ahead, all my plans had been made with regard to the things my dearly beloved comrade and I would do together, but before time came Edith had passed into the next life. After nearly forty years of closest companionship I was left to face retirement alone, never doubting, however, that she still lived vitally and radiantly beyond this bourne of Time and Place.” (p. 127)
Otherwise, there’s not much on the Ediths’ relationship. We hear of their holidays — to Italy, to Amsterdam and Switzerland, an evocative trip to post-war Ypres in 1922 and then England. We learn how these trips inspired their work back in the US, such as in setting up a pottery. But Edith Brown, who went on these trips and led some of the work that followed, is an almost ghostly presence in the text.
Edith Guerrier names lots of different people: her various relatives, the famous people she encountered, a range of people she worked with or who supported her work. But she is discreet about Edith Brown. And she also, notably I think, doesn’t name the female school friends she went to stay with in her teens, or the cowgirl she once ran away with on a “marauding expedition”.
“I had practically no companions and I longed to become acquainted with a girl about my own age who bought our milk from her father’s ranch several miles out on the high prairie … I had made up my mind that it would be a good thing to see the cowgirl’s ranch and I wished nothing to interfere with the plan.” (p. 45)
It is all, I think, suggestive.
Edith Guerrier is much more interested in demonstrating the impact of a little time and investment on those who don’t have much. We see the impact on her of earning six dollars a week rather than three, and of the $300 she is somehow awarded as compensation for the loss of her great-great grandfather’s ship in the War of 1812 (p. 75). Inheritance, patronage and government grants have a transformative impact on her and her community.
There’s something, too, about the indirect impact of this kind of initiative. They hoped, for example, that the pottery would make some money. However,
“We learned many useful facts about pottery making and became convinced that the leisurely product of a studio demands rather than provides a steady income.” (p. 96)
But that doesn’t mean it failed.
Annoyingly for my purposes, editor Mary Matson says in her preface,
“I have made excisions. I have omitted her discursively genealogical ‘Part 1’ on the history of her forbears, while making liberal use of the material in my own introduction.” (p. xx)
According to a written account by Edith’s father, the Guerriers are "of Huguenot descent, one of a body settling on the banks of the Thames about 1685.” (p. xxviii). That matches what I’d learned elsewhere, with the first Guerrier, Jean, arriving at the Huguenot church on Threadneedle Street in London on 6 December 1677.
Again according to Edith’s father, her great-grandfather George (my direct ancestor).
“was a farmer on the Isle of Dogs, and when he died he left considerable property, but [his son, Edith’s grandfather] Samuel Guerrier’s portion of the inheritance was swallowed up in an unsuccessful book publishing enterprise. He pursued clerical occupations, having but a precarious subsistence through many years and finally died in the care of my half-brother Will Guerrier at an advanced age.” (Ibid).
This Will Guerrier (1795-1850) is another of my direct ancestors.
Samuel’s son George (1837-1911), had been a freight clerk when he visited a panorama (presumably in London) showing a rather fanciful view of Mississippi, complete with monkeys. This inspired him to emigrate to the US at the age of 19, in 1856 (pp. 33-35). During the Civil War, he was Second Lieutenant of Coloured Infantry, and fought at Yorktown and the siege of Fort Wagner, and was,
“wounded at Gaines Mill and captured. For six weeks he had lain in Libby Prison, an experience he refused to talk about.” (p. 81)
Edith is sure that this, and other aspects of his war service, ruined his health. Even so, on 2 September 1867, he married Emma Ricketson, the daughter of an abolitionist, who died of tuberculosis when their daughter Edith was three.
Edith says her father was keen that she learn French (but that she never had much success).
“It may have been because of our French ancestry, and because our name, which according to the family legend was given by a French king to a distant ancestor for prowess on the battlefield.” (p. 59)
I’d like to read more about Edith and her father’s accounts of their — and my — family history. And I wonder if, when the two Ediths were in London in 1922, they looked up some of her relatives there. Her father’s cousin, William George Guerrier, died in 1920, but his son and nine year-old grandson were there.
That grandson was my grandfather. And I wonder if, just possibly, that man I knew once met Edith.
