Novels and stories about interwar Britain?

[TSBG]

I'm a great fan of literature about Britain between WWI and WWII (flexible, but that's the rough period).

I've read Anthony Powell (Dancers to the Music of Time), the Nancy Mitford novels, Dorthy Sayers, Christie, Wodehouse, and many others that don't come to mind now.

My question:

What can anyone recommend for me from this era? As you can see I'll take comedy, mystery, straight fiction or anything else.

I'll stretch to pre-WWI (late Victorian, Edwardian) as well, though WWII and postwar fiction strike me as a different breed. Nothing wrong with it, just not my sweet tooth.

I'll even go steampunk, or whatever you might call retro-sci fi set in the 20s, though actual speculative fiction from the era seems a bit lame to me; but please, show me I'm wrong.

I know this is pretty broad request, but hoping many will weigh in.

Thanks in advance for your help.

[Helena]

I enjoyed The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie.

[Beastly Rotter]

Pretty much anything by P G Wodehouse.

[maggenpye]

I would have suggested either Christie or Wodehouse, but you've already done them.

In that case I can only off the early Saint books by Leslie Charteris.

[Shakester]

Evelyn Waugh.

Great writer. Really gifted. If you haven't read him already he should be number one on your list.

[Meurglys]

Some C. P. Snow is written or set in that period, although most of his books are post war... He coined the phrase 'the corridors of power'.
Or R. F. Delderfield was once very popular although modern readers might find his style overly sentimental. To Serve Them All My Days and the A Horseman Riding By trilogy are his best known works, I think. Both of them were made into popular UK tv series.

[Miss Mapp]

Originally Posted by Shakester

Evelyn Waugh.

Great writer. Really gifted. If you haven't read him already he should be number one on your list.

I came in to mention Waugh. Brideshead Revisited is one of my favorite novels.

I also highly recommend EF Benson's Mapp and Lucia novels (where my user name comes from). They're like Wodehouse, if Wodehouse had focused on Aunts Agatha and Dahlia rather than Bertie Wooster.

If you can find them, you might also see the later (and less well known) novels and short stories in John Galsworthy's Forsyte Saga: To Let, A Modern Comedy, The White Monkey, The Silver Spoon, Swan Song. All are set in the 1920s, beginning just after the end of WWI.

I've found a list of Galsworthy's novels online at http://openlibrary.org/authors/OL77081A/John_Galsworthy.

[TSBG]

Great suggestions, everyone! I have read some Waugh, will go back and read more, but will check out all of these.

[Neidhart]

Keep the Aspidistra Flying and Coming Up for Air by George Orwell.

[ThelmaLou]

Originally Posted by TSBG

I'll stretch to pre-WWI (late Victorian, Edwardian) as well...

Don't know if this will fit the bill or not: The Perfect Summer: England 1911, Just Before the Storm.

Here's the description:

The Perfect Summer chronicles a glorious English summer a century ago when the world was on the cusp of irrevocable change. Through the tight lens of four months, Juliet Nicolson’s rich storytelling gifts rivet us with the sights, colors, and feelings of a bygone era. That summer of 1911 a new king was crowned and the aristocracy was at play, bounding from one house party to the next. But perfection was not for all. Cracks in the social fabric were showing. The country was brought to a standstill by industrial strikes. Temperatures rose steadily to more than 100 degrees; by August deaths from heatstroke were too many for newspapers to report. Drawing on material from intimate and rarely seen sources and narrated through the eyes of a series of exceptional individuals — among them a debutante, a choirboy, a politician, a trade unionist, a butler, and the Queen — The Perfect Summer is a vividly rendered glimpse of the twilight of the Edwardian era.

I haven't read it yet, but I've had it on my wish list for some time and just got it for my kindle.

[Beastly Rotter]

Originally Posted by Neidhart

Keep the Aspidistra Flying and Coming Up for Air by George Orwell.

Also Down And Out In Paris And London, and The Road To Wigan Pier. About as far from Wodehouse and Christie as you can get. And for a taste of the pulp fiction of the period, try Sapper's Bulldog Drummond series, and The Saint series of Leslie Charteris.

[Beastly Rotter]

Originally Posted by ThelmaLou

Don't know if this will fit the bill or not: The Perfect Summer: England 1911, Just Before the Storm.

Here's the description:

I haven't read it yet, but I've had it on my wish list for some time and just got it for my kindle.

Non-fiction, but The Proud Tower by the wonderful Barbara Tuchman is a splendid history of the pre-First World War 20th Century.

[Derleth]

Coming Up For Air by Orwell is pretty much explicitly about being inter-war. From Adam Cadre's review:

What the narrator contends, and what no one else seems to realize, is that another cataclysm is on the way — certainly no later than 1941, and probably sooner. Yes, everyone knows there'll probably be another war; the skies are full of bombers on practice runs, and schools have regular air raid drills. But apart from the narrator, no one seems to grasp that very soon, when people talk about "before the war" they'll mean now, not 1914; when people talk about the "modern world" they'll mean after the war to come, not now.

[SCAdian]

Originally Posted by Meurglys

Or R. F. Delderfield was once very popular although modern readers might find his style overly sentimental. To Serve Them All My Days and the A Horseman Riding By trilogy are his best known works, I think. Both of them were made into popular UK tv series.

The Avenue!! It follows the stories of several families living on an unnamed avenue in a London suburb from right after the end of WW I up until not long after the end of WW II. Available as one volume, The Avenue, or as two, The Dreaming Suburb (1919- 1940, I think) and The Avenue at War (1940-1947 or thereabouts). I first read this around 1972, and have reread it several times since.

The "Horseman Riding By" trilogy (Long Summer's Day, Post of Honour and The Green Gauntlet) is set in Devon, from the second Boer War up until, again, after WW II; the second volume, I think, covers the between-wars period. I've read this one several times, too.

Based on these books and the Swann saga (three books, Indian Mutiny-WW I), I'd recommend just about anything by Delderfield.

[astorian]

Originally Posted by Shakester

Evelyn Waugh.

Great writer. Really gifted. If you haven't read him already he should be number one on your list.

If you're looking SPECIFICALLY for novels set between the two world wars, start with Waugh's Decline and Fall and A Handful of Dust.


Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway works, too.

[Krokodil]

W. Somerset Maugham, esp. Of Human Bondage.

Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier

[maggenpye]

James Herriot's books are usually set in the inter-war years, though they go through to the 50's.

[Maserschmidt]

Originally Posted by TSBG

I'll stretch to pre-WWI (late Victorian, Edwardian) as well.

Thanks in advance for your help.

AS Byatt's The Children's Book stretches from 1895 to WW I and captures a certain late-colonial mood. Byatt isn't everyone's cup of tea,but I enjoyed it.

[Dendarii Dame]

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons. It's very funny.

[Mk VII]

Henry Williamson's A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight series.

[Rodgers01]

I recently read and really enjoyed J.G. Farrell's Troubles, about an English family in Ireland (at the time still part of the UK) just after WWI.

[ThelmaLou]

Originally Posted by Dendarii Dame

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons. It's very funny.

The movie is absolutely fabulous, too.

[ChrisM]

I like L.P. Hartley's novels like The Go-Between, The Hireling and Eustace and Hilda. I'm not sure precisely when they are set, though, but I think they are generally around that period.

Also Jocelyn Brooke's novels, such as The Scapegoat and The Orchid Trilogy.

[ChrisM]

Oh, also some of Elizabeth Bowen's novels, like The Last September.

[maggenpye]

Originally Posted by ThelmaLou

The movie is absolutely fabulous, too.

I see what you did there.

[Maserschmidt]

Originally Posted by Rodgers01

I recently read and really enjoyed J.G. Farrell's Troubles, about an English family in Ireland (at the time still part of the UK) just after WWI.

We should warn the OP that this is a crazy rambling dark funny heavily-metaphorical novel, kind of like Fawlty Towers on opium. But well worth the read.

[Rodgers01]

Originally Posted by Maserschmidt

We should warn the OP that this is a crazy rambling dark funny heavily-metaphorical novel, kind of like Fawlty Towers on opium. But well worth the read.

Good catch! It is indeed an excellent read and fits the time period, but is maybe not tonally in line with what one usually associates with interwar Britain.

Not a novel, and I haven't read it myself yet, but Robert Grave's The Long Week-End: A Social History of Great Britain 1918-1939 looks very good.

[Bridget Burke]

Originally Posted by ThelmaLou

The movie is absolutely fabulous, too.

An earlier BBC Cold Comfort Farm series was also excellent....

I've seen Cold Comfort Farm, Dodie Smith's I Capture The Castle and Molly Keane's Devoted Ladies considered "Middlebrow Parodic-Gothic." Three of my favorite books set in the period--I had no idea there was genre! Although the time period of Cold Comfort Farm was actually a later 20th century--in which there had been no Second World War; film versions just set it in the 1930's...

If fiction from earlier in the century is allowed, let me recommend Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End. It begins in 1912 and ends some undetermined time after The Great War--but was written in the 1920's and considered a modernist classic. Quite worthwhile if you expend just a little effort. As is the adaptation scripted by Tom Stoppard, just begun on BBC2 and coming to HBO next year.....

[TSBG]

Thanks again everyone! I have read Cold Comfort Farm and I Capture the Castle, will try Devoted Ladies. And the description of Troubles doesn't, er, trouble me, sounds great. As do all of these.

[Kal]

Roughly the first half of Richmal Crompton's Just William series would fit the bill.

G. K. Chesterton's Father Brown series.

Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons series.

[Parenchyma]

Originally Posted by Bridget Burke

If fiction from earlier in the century is allowed, let me recommend Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End. It begins in 1912 and ends some undetermined time after The Great War--but was written in the 1920's and considered a modernist classic. Quite worthwhile if you expend just a little effort. As is the adaptation scripted by Tom Stoppard, just begun on BBC2 and coming to HBO next year.....

I got this from the library to get ready for the BBC show and was surprised how much I like it. I had only read the first 150 pages when I saw the first episode and that also inspired me to keep reading. Now I'm 750 pages in (out of 900) and quite glad I expended that little effort. I will have to see the last 4 episodes before I can weigh in on Stoppard's adaptation, but so far it's fascinating to see what he's chosen to distill from that massive book down to 6 hours of TV.

[ThelmaLou]

This looks like another possibility: Rose: My Life in Service to Lady Astor

[bathsheba]

Helen Forrester's autobiographical trilogy of life in Depression era Liverpool.

Anything by Monica Dickens (Charles Dickens' granddaughter).

[Lust4Life]

John Buchans, 39 Steps, a bloody good read even now.

[ThelmaLou]

Originally Posted by Lust4Life

John Buchans, 39 Steps, a bloody good read even now.

I adore this book! I can't figure out why every movie made of it has to screw it up! The plot and the hero are so clever-- I wish someone would put it on the screen just the way it was written. I had hopes for the TV version that came out recently, but no-- they tried to "improve" it. It doesn't need improving.

[Lust4Life]

Originally Posted by ThelmaLou

I adore this book! I can't figure out why every movie made of it has to screw it up! The plot and the hero are so clever-- I wish someone would put it on the screen just the way it was written. I had hopes for the TV version that came out recently, but no-- they tried to "improve" it. It doesn't need improving.

I've long thought that myself .

[JackieLikesVariety]

oooh, good thread!!

try some of Georgette Heyer, while better known of writing Regency Romance novels (which she invented!) she wrote murder mysteries and some are from that era.

Behold, Here's Poison



From Publishers Weekly
Although her contemporaries Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers and Ngaio Marsh got more attention, Heyer (1902-1974) also was an important pioneer in the mystery field. When she wasn't writing her more famous historical romances, Heyer turned out several sharp and satirical mysteries such as this one, which in many ways is as bracingly modern as the film Gosford Park in its treatment of life above and below stairs in a posh country house.


"Miss Heyer's characters and dialogue are an abiding delight to me... I have seldom met people to whom I have taken so violent a fancy from the word 'Go.'"
Dorothy L. Sayers