Mrs England – Stacey Halls

Mrs England - Stacey Halls
Mrs England – Stacey Halls

Easy listening (audiobook) set in Edwardian England.

Historical fiction combined with a low stakes thriller/mystery as Ruby May, our a scholarship-funded Norland Nanny fleeing “something in her past” (connected with her family, and her dad in particular), finds herself in the middle of another strange family set up at her new post in a “big house” in Yorkshire surrounded by woods, crags and cotton (alpaca, actually) mills.

Enjoyable, but I did wince every time our heronine’s mention of her Brummie roots” triggered an “Oh, The Black Country” response.

Author’s page: Mrs England – Stacey Halls

Narrator: Imogen Wilde

Transcription – Kate Atkinson

Transcription - Kate Atkinson
Transcription – Kate Atkinson

There’s a note at the end of Transcription where Kate Atkinson reveals the twin inspirations for the novel – a set of World War II transcripts of recordings made of bugged premises, classified at the time but recently released by the National Archives, and Eric Roberts, a bank clerk at the Westminster Bank (Is there anything more boring?) who posed as a Gestapo agent during WW2 when he worked for MI5 as a spy (Is there anything more exciting?).

Transcription blends and fictionalises these two sets of facts, and revolves around (and reveals) the life of the young woman who typed the up the transcripts. And so we follow Juliet Armstrong from when she leaves school on the death of her mother, to her recruitment to work for MI5 as a typist, to living and loving in London during the war, into the 1950s and finally, briefly, to her life afterwards.

Smashing, as always.

Author page: Transcription – Kate Atkinson

Penguin (Publisher) Article: Kate Atkinson on Transcription – Kate Atkinson tells Sarah Shaffi how the curious case of ‘perfect spy’ Jack King inspired her book, Transcription.

Now We Shall Be Entirely Free – Andrew Miller

Now We Shall Be Entirely Free - Andrew Miller
Now We Shall Be Entirely Free – Andrew Miller

A gentleman soldier returns from the Peninsula War, silent and remote. In search of self healing he travels the western sea roads north from Bristol to the Scottish Isles.

In time we learn that John Lacroix was an officer in charge of a motley bunch of infantrymen making their way to Corunna, and that something terrible happened on that journey.

Unbeknownst to Lacroix he is being tracked by an ill suited pair – Calley, a British footsoldier, and Medina, a Spanish officer, who have been tasked with bringing him to justice – or, in Calley’s interpretation, returning with Lacroix’s head in a sack. We never really learn who is behind their orders.

Historical novel, romance, thriller – it’s a real mixture that offers a fascinating perspective on the Peninsula Wars, 18th century trade and travel, Scottish emigration and Hebridean life.

Publisher page: Now We Shall Be Entirely Free – Andrew Miller