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London Belongs to Me (Penguin Modern Classics)

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In 1948 it was made into a film with a cast of iconic British character actors, among them Alastair Sim, Joyce Carey, Fay Compton and Richard Attenborough. Ted, Mr Josser’s married son, personifies mediocre respectability: on becoming manager of the Co-op hardware department – one of Orwell’s ‘five-to-ten-pound-a-weekers’ – he thinks his six pound five a week at thirty-four is as good as it gets (Doris gets four as a typist and Josser Senior two for his pension). Here is a magical evocation of London life during an extraordinary period, which encompasses engagements, a serious illness, numerous changes of address, two weddings, the murder and the subsequent trial, the Blitz both from a distance and close up, and several deaths.

The blackouts are vividly presented (“it had a sinister, almost solid, quality of its own, this blackout, so that you felt you had to carve your way through it, scraping and scooping out a passage as you went along”) and when Collins emphasises the carry-on attitude of Londoners during the war, it seems not so much heroic as dutiful (“[Mr Josser] had something else to think about. Otto is something of a pantomime Nazi, with his conscientious ‘Sieg Heils,’ his unquestioning acceptance of party ideology and his worship of Hitler. I’m not a Londoner; I grew up mostly in the North of England and spent some time in the Potteries (Stoke-on-Trent.

small oily mermaids (reduced to) only tiny white fragments left clinging to the ingenious spring framework of fine bones’.

Mr Squales testifies against Percy, but in the process exposes to his fiancée Mrs Vizzard the falsity of his claims to be able to contact the dead and to predict the future.Most purchases from business sellers are protected by the Consumer Contract Regulations 2013 which give you the right to cancel the purchase within 14 days after the day you receive the item. Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, American Samoa, Andorra, Angola, Anguilla, Argentina, Armenia, Azerbaijan Republic, Belarus, Benin, Bhutan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, British Virgin Islands, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde Islands, Central African Republic, Chad, Channel Islands, Comoros, Cook Islands, Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas), Fiji, French Polynesia, Gabon Republic, Gambia, Georgia, Ghana, Greenland, Guam, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, India, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kiribati, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Macedonia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Marshall Islands, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mayotte, Micronesia, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nauru, Nepal, Netherlands Antilles, New Caledonia, Niger, Nigeria, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Puerto Rico, Republic of the Congo, Russian Federation, Rwanda, Saint Helena, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, San Marino, Senegal, Serbia, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Somalia, Suriname, Svalbard and Jan Mayen, Swaziland, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Togo, Tonga, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Uganda, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Vatican City State, Venezuela, Virgin Islands (U. Somewhere in our loft, there is a box containing jigsaws, board games and a very particular pack of ‘Old Maid’ cards dating from the 1940s. Alastair Sim played the clairvoyant in the film and I had him in my mind all the time I was reading this marvellous book. There is an overweight man, moving from unskilled job to unskilled job, with adenoids and an obsession with food.

I was delighted to read this wonderful review of a book I first read, and loved, many years ago when I was a teenager. London Belongs To Me tells the story of the lives of the residents of Mrs Vizzard’s lodging house set amidst what Conan Doyle described as the ‘howling desert of south London’, from the period following Munich through to the height of the Blitz in Christmas 1940. The trustworthy lovers of Bridget [Jones’s] single girl, younger days in London are going to adore London Belongs to Me, the story of a girl (who could be Bridget’s younger American cousin! The second world war looms as each of the varied and memorable characters contend with their own lives and preoccupations.We get a glimpse of the City itself through Mr Josser, as he retires from his job; we encounter London’s more Bohemian elements through the eyes of his daughter as she seeks an independent life for herself. In all Norman Collins wrote 16 novels and two plays, including London Belongs to Me (1945), The Governor’s Lady (1968) and The Husband’s Story (1978).

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