Abdication
Juliet Nicolson
Abdication
England, 1936. After the recent death of George V, the nation has a new king, Edward VIII. But for all the confident pomp and ceremony of the accession, it is a turbulent time. Terrible poverty and unemployment affect many, but trouble few among the ruling elite; for others, Oswald Mosley's New Party, which offers a version of the fascism on the rise in Germany, seems to offer the vision of the future. Nineteen-year-old May Thomas has just disembarked at Liverpool Docks after making the long journey by steamer from Barbados to escape the constraints of her sugar-plantation childhood. Her first job as a secretary and chauffeuse to Sir Philip Blunt, Chief Whip in Baldwin's Conservative government, will open her eyes to the upper echelons of British society...The unlikely friendship she forms with Evangeline Nettlefold, American god-daughter of the Chief Whip's wife and an old school friend of Wallis Simpson, will see her through family upheavals including the shocking, sudden loss of her mother; but more significant for May, the Blunts' son Rupert has an Oxford University friend, Julian, a young man of conscience for whom, despite all barriers of class, she cannot help but fall.
3.1 out of 5 based on 7 reviews
|
Omniscore:
|
| Classification |
Fiction |
| Genre |
General Fiction |
| Format |
Hardcover |
| Pages |
368 |
| RRP |
|
| Date of Publication |
June 2012 |
| ISBN |
978-1408823088 |
| Publisher |
Bloomsbury |
| |
England, 1936. After the recent death of George V, the nation has a new king, Edward VIII. But for all the confident pomp and ceremony of the accession, it is a turbulent time. Terrible poverty and unemployment affect many, but trouble few among the ruling elite; for others, Oswald Mosley's New Party, which offers a version of the fascism on the rise in Germany, seems to offer the vision of the future. Nineteen-year-old May Thomas has just disembarked at Liverpool Docks after making the long journey by steamer from Barbados to escape the constraints of her sugar-plantation childhood. Her first job as a secretary and chauffeuse to Sir Philip Blunt, Chief Whip in Baldwin's Conservative government, will open her eyes to the upper echelons of British society...The unlikely friendship she forms with Evangeline Nettlefold, American god-daughter of the Chief Whip's wife and an old school friend of Wallis Simpson, will see her through family upheavals including the shocking, sudden loss of her mother; but more significant for May, the Blunts' son Rupert has an Oxford University friend, Julian, a young man of conscience for whom, despite all barriers of class, she cannot help but fall.
The Great Silence: 1918-1920 Living in the Shadow of the Great War by Juliet Nicolson.
Reviews
The Independent
Leyla Sanai
“Nicolson brings Edward and Wallis's relationship to vivid life, artfully conveying Edward's infatuation and Wallis's brittle social-butterfly charm. Fascinating facts are more riveting than any fiction: the cuckolded Ernest Simpson's long tolerance of his wife's infidelity; his final escape into the arms of Mary, an old schoolfriend of Wallis's, and the planted evidence of his infidelity in order to procure divorce. Myriad historical facts and luminaries of the day embellish the story. Abdication would make a stunning adaptation for the BBC.”
20/06/2012
Read Full Review
The Daily Mail
Harry Ritchie
“This is historian Juliet Nicolson’s first novel, so it’s no surprise to find the atmosphere and events of 1936 so fully described - a little too fully, in fact, so that the fictional and real-life dramas of the story too often remain in the background. ”
31/05/2012
Read Full Review
The Spectator
Philip Ziegler
“The danger of letting a social historian write novels is that the social history is likely to lie rather heavily upon the narrative. Nicolson is not guiltless in this respect. The characters in her novel are strikingly well connected ... We are present when the ‘politics don, Frank Pakenham’, is beaten up by Mosley’s thugs, and even have the pleasure of being introduced to Pakenham’s ‘three-year-old daughter, adorable and curly-haired and innocent’ (Lady Antonia Fraser also features among those whom the author thanks in her acknowledgements, so she can claim double billing). It is all good fun, but there is perhaps too much of it. That complaint over, this is a thoroughly enjoyable and entertaining book. ”
16/06/2012
Read Full Review
The Times
Kate Saunders
“This is a delightful story of a friendship forged by the drama of the Abdication and the approaching war; ideal for the intelligent deckchair.”
09/06/2012
Read Full Review
The Daily Telegraph
Elena Seymenliyska
“Nicolson’s characters proceed, Zelig-like, to bump into some of the period’s key historical figures. Mosley, Orwell, Woolf, the young Elizabeth II, John Reith, even Hitler, are shoehorned into a story that showcases the author’s grasp of historical fact at the expense of her feel for fiction ... None the less, Abdication is impressive in its scope and ambition. ”
28/06/2012
Read Full Review
The Daily Express
Matthew Dennison
“The text is larded with detail guaranteed to keep the reader hooked: lesbian high jinks in the gardener’s cottage; a story of child abuse; clashes between Oswald Mosley’s Black Shirts and London’s Jewish population; and the Jarrow Crusade. There is also a love story centred on May, which crosses the social divide. But none of it is really enough. Despite some fine comic passages involving Evangeline, who wears a wig and is prone to wardrobe malfunctions, Abdication never fully lives up to its promise. Few characters are convincingly lifelike and even the climactic event, the Abdication, feels a bit of an anti-climax.”
01/06/2012
Read Full Review
The Sunday Times
Karen Robinson
“Despite the care with which the historical detail is marshalled, Nicolson’s fictional reimagining of events adds no real insight.”
15/07/2012
Read Full Review