John’s Comments
A rather quirky easy to read novel about a wife, her family & friends all caught up in Oswald Mosley’s political movement in the 1930s, and the subsequent imprisonment in Holloway and incarceration on the Isle of Man. Maybe not great literature but it kept you engaged - rather moreish.
Could read this story through many different lenses
• A story of a pleasant, friendly, but tad dim, middle class housewife and how she got embroiled in Mosley’s politics and the party he created
• A commentary on the way sisters interact, the power and dynamics of such a sisterhood, their relations, issues of trust and forgiveness, influence of their husbands, et al.
• The struggle of anyone who feels unfairly imprisoned and the emotions they feel, the unfairness of it all, the impact on their family – particularly children, etc
• The way it offered a different insight into the early years of the Second War in the UK and the repercussions of the divided and divisive politics of the 1930s.
• A commentary on the British class system, its mores, prejudices and slow decline. Particularly the way the family reacted to Eric the “garagist”
• The way that we mythologise about the English, England and the English countryside and life – and how such myth images are used as a basis of political careers and movements – such as Oswald Mosley in the 1930s. Also, how such a myth-image is enhanced if you live overseas and what disappointment when you finally return “home”. You are altered but everyone still going on about the same old stuff – “how flat and disappointed this can make you feel” p.118
This is a book for and about women – their hopes and fears, and what they have to deal with
• Phyllis’s hunch about her sister, Patricia, sleeping with her husband Hugh – a case of happenstance. P.120
• The rather grotesque dance when Sarita’s husband, Fergus, tosses off on Phyllis – the hilt of dagger, a gizzard, something warm and wetly stickly slithered across her skin p.146
• The deep hurt and impact of the separation from your children, who is looking after them, what will they think about you and fear that you will lose them -
• The distrust in your close family. The sisterhood is in reality pretty fragile – Nina betraying them to the police, Patricia trying to take her son, Edwin, from her.
• That people who should be closest to Phyllis see her as a bad women – they are ashamed of her. She is a disgrace, she is exiled from her family, grandchildren are wary of her, she is no longer of their social class.
Score: 7.5
Willm’s Comments
I got quite a lot out of this book: I hadn’t known that the ‘middle class of that time were so involved with Mosley; likewise the number of women; the hero-worship of Mosely; and that so many people were imprisoned during the war (though I can of course see why, except for the derangement of the great British judicial system which apparently plucked the low-hanging fruit, our central protagonist for example, while ignoring a number of those who could or would have posed a much greater threat to the allies war-effort: Mosely’s private secretary for example - though, again I am unsure that I learned this from the book as opposed to Google. Maybe because of my lower-class roots, I found all the characters, their whole milieu, despicable, so smugly encompassed in their world of wealth and privilege. I confess to feeling a bit sorry for Phyllis. She probably wasn’t the sharpest knife in the kitchen (not that she would ever have gone into the kitchen!), or was she simply a bird in a gilded cage being carried along with the rest of her coterie? Then betrayed by her sister!
I was unsure as to the importance, or necessity, of Sarita ,as her part is not really a plot device moving the story forward, nor a red herring cleverly distracting us from what is really going on. I think the whole narration could have foregone her character without any loss. The prison environment was particularly well-captured, and I can see how the seeming injustice of imprisonment would sustain an ongoing faithfulness to the Party and the Leader.
Score 8.5
Mark T Comments
Interesting family dynamics, Three sisters, fascism, war and prison.
Score 7.5.
Richard’s Comments
I very much enjoyed this book. I liked the style, the plot and story and the timespans and how things gradually evolved, the descriptions of the very well realised and different characters, the emotions that were evoked, and the very human history of the Fascist movement in Britain.
There were lots of things to like. Her ability to conjure up the human senses, - particularly smell, but also sight and colour, was exceptional - she always comments on the smell of places and people:
• “Of course I had never been the beauty of the family, but my hair was the one thing people had admired; it was long and abundant, not quite the colour of a conker, although that is how people did describe it. Someone said to me once, when I was young, that my hair was as glossy as the flank of a well-stabled horse, and it is true that it did have a great deal of shine.”
• “We hardly ever went to his house. It smelt funny, fatty and a bit sour, because of the milking.”
• “I loathe the smell of hospitals,’ said Patricia, once they were back in the car.”
• “As a child there had been nothing Phyllis loved more than the smell of her mother’s skin.”
• “There was a sweet smell in the car, a mixture of the leather tang of the seats and some sort of cheap, soapy odour that she couldn’t identify.”
• “Phyllis noticed a sharp, oniony sort of smell. She wasn’t sure if it was coming from her, or from the others. It seemed to fill the room, as if a pan of stew was being heated nearby. It wasn’t the smell of ordinary sweat, the sweat of exertion; it was the sweat of unease and fear. She recognized it , now . Perhaps it was the smell of dread, the dread of being locked up once more, separated from families and sweethearts. Or perhaps it was the visitors who were perspiring, made nervy from the unfamiliarity of the hostile surroundings and abrupt goodbyes.”
I liked her evocation of the casual superiority and privilege of the ‘upper classes’, and their view of democracy: “pretend to listen, whoever is talking: pretend one person’s view is as worthwhile as another’s. Some piffling little man, I mean a draper or a taxi-man: as if one cares what they think! Quite frankly, if anyone cared about the opinions of people of that sort, one wouldn’t need leaders.”
I liked the fact that we were almost a third of the way into the book before it was made explicit that we were dealing with Mosley and his Blackshirt movement – it all gradually crept up on me. And I especially liked the fact that this was written from the viewpoint of someone who was bowled over by him, and by both his personal magnetism, and his philosophy: “What was remarkable too was the feeling that everyone who met him came away with , the sense of an encounter that was unhurried , warm and entirely their own . And he was a true gentleman who saw the individual in each one of his followers , while bringing the same genial interest and authority.” It was fascinating to see this side of someone I had always (been brought up to think of) thought of as rather a monster.
And the politics of trying to avoid a major war, just 20 years after the end of the ‘War to end all Wars’, and of trying to focus on ‘Britain First’ and only doing things that were in Britain and the Colonies interests’ was really well portrayed – and obviously is being played out currently in the USA.
• “He brought such force, such hope! It was clear that he was the only politician who had the strength of character and of argument to redeem Britain from this futile and needless war.”
• “He spoke of a Britain restored to greatness, yet encompassing all that was best about the industry and invention of the present day: ‘From the ashes of the past shall rise a Merrie England of gay and serene manhood and adorned by the miracle of the modern age and the modern mind.’”
Her evocation of class in this ‘between the wars’ generation was, I thought, superb: “She had grown up with all this, or a slightly less sophisticated version of it. Her family was not worldly, but it was established, comfortable. They were county people, with well-stocked stables and a cellar full of port and silver pheasants adorning the dining-room table. What could be more natural than to wish to replicate, or actually improve upon, the milieu of her own childhood, so happy and secure?” Finally, I thought that the ending was brilliant: “The reason these two both matters, still, to me is that I think I can honestly say that they were the only people in my life who ever saw the good in me. Who believed I was a good person. No one else ever looked for the good in me, and so no one else ever found it. But they did.
I also had no idea that (so many) people were rounded up and interned – I knew that happened to ‘foreigners’, even those who were refugees, but not to UK citizens – imprisonment without trial. It was both easy to, and enjoyable to, read, and I am very glad I read it!
Score: 8.
Chris B’s Comments
Well written and the jumping from 1930/40s (3rd person) to 1979 (first person) worked well this time, and the creeping realisation of what the jolly camps are about. Good narrative of how people can get drawn in to a vile ideology but almost acts as an apologist for The BU (defending Britain and wanting peace). Good sense of what happens to people from the opposing side in wartime living in Britian
I liked the contextual natural surroundings and Phyllis’ love for them. Sense that she can observe things better as having lived abroad. The characters well drawn and distinguished but not very interesting except as a portrayal of snobby UMC, though Patricia reminds me of my sister-in-law, and I can believe the sisters both did the dirty on P. Some strong moments including the attempted seduction and subsequent suicide, the arrival at Holloway and the conclusion with Jamie.
I liked some descriptions e.g. response to brain damaged mother: Phyllis felt two things at the same time. The first was that her mother was very present and could see clean through her, was perfectly aware of all the reluctance and false cheer in her. The second feeling, just as strong, was that she could grasp nothing whatsoever, as if she lived in another language, another territory. The place where these contradictory certainties met and could not be made to tally was forlorn e.g. the dinner party: At Patricia’s dinner party the evening before, Phyllis had taken a liking to one of the wives, Sarita Templeton. There wasn’t anyone else present that Phyllis would have wanted to make friends with. The other women had all seemed to be minutely differing versions of a type: confident, rather brittle, fair-haired women with good figures, all wearing big rings of diamonds and sapphires. They agreed with everybody else about everything and laughed appreciatively at things the men said, none of which struck Phyllis as funny at all. She had forgotten that this was how women flirted in England, by laughing prettily at their neighbour’s every utterance.
Score 7
Andrew’s Comments
A story of upper-class people living in their own detached, insulated world, of idealistic beliefs as WW2 starts to loom, all in the shadow of the Great War. Enjoyed the start with the focus on her hair colour change and prison and her acceptance of her guilt. The old-fashioned feel to the writing and settings and how characters interact and speak helped set the scene of yesteryear. Some vivid descriptions, and lyrical easy prose – “an atmosphere of high gaiety marked the visit, an almost electrical charge, as if a brighter lightbulb had been inserted into the lamp of the day” Or “there was a quiet in the house which was denser than ordinary silence, as if it had been thickened with sorrow”.
The characters well set quickly, though perhaps only Phyllis is memorable. Her relationships with her sisters were well described with Nina later betraying her to the police and Patricia taking her son away from her. Phyllis defines her life by her not having prevented Sarita‘s death, while seemingly not having reflected on the darkness of fascism, just accepting it is a peace movement with a charismatic leader. It’s hard to feel sympathy for someone who apparently thought so little, even 30 years later. Could she really be that passive, that innocent?
The narrative flowed along easily, smoothly, in an understated way. It was never a page-turner but nevertheless but a book whose pages I enjoyed turning - particularly the prison scenes. A good last line: “ No one else ever looked for the good in me, and so no one else found it. But they did.”. A final quote which I think sums up the era, the people, the places, Connolly’s writing and the ‘what might have been’: “She wanted someone younger and more dashing, who could produce for her a world of dances and banter and fun; of long curving banisters and silver grape scissors and lovely clothes; of rooms scented with cigar smoke and hot-house gardenias and expensive scent; an enclosed world, reflected in old and darkly spotted mirrors hung low on broad half-landings or above side tables of gleaming rosewood”.
Score: 8.0
Chris W’s Comments
A clever book which is sadly very relevant to current events.
I liked the way the story introduces you to the refined family which Phyllis belongs to returning from a prolonged stay abroad. The author has a beautiful writing style with some very perceptive descriptions:” Outside in the velvety darkness all around lay England. In the still air and in meadows and marshes and country towns; in smooth rivers and deep woods; at the edges of pastures where cattle dozed. Near to them now in the sleeping house was the sea, quietly lapping in sheltered inlets where little boats bobbed on the black water, safe in the shallow harbour of home. Home. Even thinking the word made her chest catch with a little jolt of happiness.“
You are very slowly and insidiously introduced to the fun weekend events and children’s activity camps that give Phyllis a purpose but which you begin to learn are led by their “Leader“ who is obviously referring to Oswald Mosley. I like the way the story was written with very mild and subdued descriptions but extremely observant on the nuances of the British class system which were so pronounced in those pre-war days.
Phyllis and her family believe that they belong to the “County” set and are very distinct from the-riffraff. There are many perceptive observations of this during the book: “Eric had always aspired to playing golf, he was that sort of man”, “ he was very capable at a great many things, considering he was essentially a glorified mechanic”, or “ to be removed from the sanctuary of your own home like a piece of evidence wasn’t a thing that happened to people like her and Hugh”. Most of the characters in this upper-class set were really rather nasty both to others and to their friends. The most toffee nosed of the sisters Patricia was particularly unlikable. When asked to care for their infirm mother since she had by far the largest home she replied: “With the best will in the world, I can’t have her here. We’ve just got a new puppy “.
Throughout the book I was waiting for some big event to occur “after the party” but apart from accepting a dance where her host overtly in her mind rapes her in front of the other guests which at the time she believed brought about the suicide of her best friend there was no such event. in this sense I felt slightly let down that there was no such crescendo in the book.
As she looks back over her life, it is interesting that she still believes that she and her friends did nothing wrong in supporting Mosley and his British Union of Fascists. The book is clever in that it almost convinces you that her views and activities at the time were all really rather civilised and acceptable. She certainly thinks so and continues to go to Moseley reunions with pride but secretly after her release from prison. Ultimately Phyllis was a naive woman-without any real political understanding at all who with her husband Hugh was taken in by the “Movement” and unable to see the negative aspects of fascism which she was becoming embroiled with. She is initially uncomfortable with the fact that her daughter Julia has vandalised a local theatre with the letters PJ (Perish Judah). She asks her sister Nina whether this is not taking things too far. ”I don’t suppose any of them have ever even seen a Jew” to which her sister Nina knowingly responds” you’re not quite up to speed with it all”.
But instead of looking back apologetically, she remains indignant that she and her friends did nothing wrong and were entitled to their own political views in our free society. She resents the fact that she has lost her friends and family who no longer respect her and consider her to be “not a good person”.
Worryingly this lack of awareness for how unacceptable politics can insidiously take people over is playing out on our television screens every day at the moment. Not only in the USA and Russia but in Hungary and with the AFD party in Germany who now have potential representation in parliament.
For this reason, I think this book was a very timely choice and deserves to be necessary reading for every student in these uncertain times.
Finally, I did find it interesting the extent to which people who were interned for their political views or memberships were not given any right of judicial recourse both during the war and later after the war to the extent even that peoples pensions were permanently withdrawn. But in the light of what became public after the war about the Holocaust, this is perhaps understandable.
Score 8.5
Mark W Comments
First the positives: I found this book flowed nicely, it was easy to read, it had a coherent narrative, it was well paced, and it dealt with a very interesting subject. It educated me in a subject that I was only vaguely aware of but had no idea that the Moseley followers were treated so harshly during WW2. I thought that the opening chapters set the scene well, getting to know the three families a bit leading to the camp organisation. I initially assumed that the camp was one of those jolly innocent English institutions, but all that changed with the arrival of ‘The Leader’ and then it dawned on me what was going on. I should have seen the pointers such as the uniforms, but we do have uniforms for scouts and girl guides which are innocent, I think. The party and the suicide of Sarita was a major turning point and then the revelation that she was a drug user was a bit of a surprise. The police visit followed on quite quickly and then everything changed. The subsequent incarceration first of all in Holloway and then in the Isle of Man were well described.
I had assumed that the italicised first-person interviews were taking place soon after her release from prison and that she was in for murder or something. Especially as the book opened with: When I came out of prison my hair was white……
But that was explained fairly soon afterwards. It did get a bit muddled on the return from Paris when the Phyllis 1979 narrative coincided with the actual story. She had some nice turns of phrase: Nina’s house stood a little way along from the garage, set back from the road politely, like someone waiting to be introduced
But the main problem for me was that the three sisters, the main characters as their respective husbands were relatively minor unsympathetic characters, were not characters that I particularly warmed to. Phyllis, the main character, was the least dreadful of the three, but even she demonstrated many elements of privileged upbringing, and was quite a superficial, misguided character. I was expecting her to have at least seen the error of her ways following her period in prison but nothing doing, so that lost any small bit of sympathy that I had for her! I understand that the author deliberately made the sisters unlikeable but that’s a problem when the result is, for me, a lack of engagement in the characters. Patricia was the worst of the three, for example: Greville knew a tremendous number of people - it was one of the things that had made Patricia plump for him. The part of the narrative that didn’t seem very plausible was that Nina, who seemed the less terrible of the other two sisters, would drop Phyllis and Hugh in it, in order to save her own skin.
The Sarita suicide, which was possibly one explanation for the title, seemed to me on reflection like a pretty irrelevant filler. Nothing really happened afterwards, and we soon got into the main narrative with the police visit and the jail section. I assume that ‘After the Party’ could also refer to the BFP?
The relationship with Jamie was one of the positives, however, a well-meaning artistic type who, had things been different would probably have shaken Phyllis out of her misguided opinions!
Enjoyable but with not very likeable characters. Generally rich, entitled persons with right wing views would not be my favourite choice but, despite this major problem, the book was still quite enjoyable, and I looked forward to reading it.
Score 7.0
Steve Comments
So why was the apparently reasonable and intelligent Phyllis in prison? That question locks you into the book straight away. But who is she talking to? Not a family member, so presumably a nameless researcher, student, biographer… (‘Jamie Dickinson. Not that he’d be part of your research: he had nothing to do with politics or any of that.’). A bit of an early red herring
Phyllis’ back story of an overseas family life that she enjoyed, followed by a return to a rather make-do-and-mend existence while they found their feet in Blighty was interesting. She has a great turn of phrase: ‘here, the children were always underfoot waiting to be told what they were doing, like gundogs moping outside the shooting season.’ The society that they land into, her sisters and parents, all exist on the fringes of the aspirational ‘county’ set. It’s an insight into upper-middle-class life at the time - men with some kind of income but no-one quite says what or where from… other than Eric, who runs a garage, (whisper it darling, a tradesman) but ends up the most successful. Sarita was interesting, but I’m still not quite sure what her character was intended to add other than a bit of drama and colour, along with a vile creepy husband, Fergus.
Connolly nailed the types who turned up at the meetings, and the organisers: ‘It was a rich smell, as of flowers cultivated under glass: a hot-house smell of jasmine or stephanotis, but with something troublingly animal beneath it, as if there were a dead mouse somewhere under the flowerpots.’
The dialogue is beautifully judged - very filmic (you can hear Celia Johnson). Phyllis’ first meeting with the awful Venetia: ‘before the evening was out, she had extended an invitation to Phyllis and the children, to lunch. “Nothing formal, we’ll eat with the children,’ she said. ‘This sherry’s rather gruesome, isn’t it? Sticky. Wish I’d asked for gin.”.
And thus, the scene is set, and certain traits of the main players are enhanced and exaggerated as we go. I enjoyed the response of the parents to Eric bringing Julia home - what do you think you’re playing at? Are you implying that my daughter…? you can see we have people round, couldn’t you have kept her at your place until morning? what will our guests think - the evening is ruined… - not a word of thanks.
The sad sad ritual of sending Edwin off to school ‘She could smell his little-boy smell, slightly bitter, like the shell of a cracked nut.’
By now it’s quite clear what the camps are about and who ‘The Leader’ is. In the eyes of these appalling folk, Mosley is some kind of latter-day Baden Powell. They are sufficiently myopic and selfish in their view to miss the global significance of the emerging British Union of Fascists and make it all about them. Internment must have been discussed at government level so given their level of involvement, I’d have expected Hugh, Greville to have picked up some warning signs. But as it turned out it was Eric and Nina who dodged the bullet, stitching up Phyllis and Hugh on the way.
It offered a fascinating insight into a time I didn’t know much detail about, other than the headlines. Being rounded up for internment at a moment’s notice - would they still have taken Phylis if they hadn’t found her husband’s gun? Some of the chaos and the ‘making it up as we go along’ attitude reminded me of efforts to prepare for Covid-19 in 2020.
The utter lack of regret in Phyllis’ narrative was surprising. She still felt it was right to support Moseley 40 years later (and to go to his birthday parties). For most of the book one broadly empathised with Phyllis, but I lost this sympathy as her post-war life was detailed later in the book. Her inability to see the bigger picture made you wonder how many more of the county set were hiding their fascistic tendencies for convenience and for all we know are still out there waiting for the right moment. Tories for now, soon to be Reform and who knows what in the future.
A really interesting book, with lots to think about, both domestic nostalgia and geopolitical insights. On the kids’ letters written to them on the Isle of Man:‘…correspondence generally read as if he was struggling to fill even one side of a page. The children had been taught, as Phyllis had in her own childhood, that thank-you letters must go over the page in order to count. If you didn’t go over the page you didn’t seem grateful enough.’
And on her own situation: ‘All I’d done was to believe that there was one man who could prevent war and bring Britain back to greatness through strong ties with our Empire and the hard graft of our own workers. A Greater Britain, that’s what the Leader named it.’ With shocking timeliness, it’s Trump
Score: 8.5
