Miss Carter's War by Sheila Hancock.

                 Miss Carter's War by Sheila Hancock.

"She could have had a lifetime of peace here with a man who loved her. When the hamlet gathered on Sundays to play bowles, her grandchildren could have joined those of their neighbours."

Marguerite Carter was half-French. She worked behind enemy lines for the Special Operations Executive (SOE) during the second world war. Her mother was French, her father English and Marguerite had left France when she was 12. The Bletchley lot called them the Baker St. Irregulars.

The story takes us through the 50s through to the millenium when Marguerite is a 24 year old teacher starting her first job at Dartford County Grammar, Hancock's old school. Marguerite, just like the writer, had a Messiah complex according to her close friend Tony Stansfield and Hancock's late husband John Thaw. She had a strong need to look after people being a busybody as she called herself. She hated idleness and in moments of loneliness she would start on her crusade of making the world a better place.

The book took 4 years of researching and writing. It is a work of fiction but based on real historical events, useful as a social history and indicating Hancock's interest in political causes and her left-wing politics. Interestingly, some of the characters are real.

After being awarded her degree in 1948 from Cambridge alongside the Queen proved to be a historical occasion. She was an exceptional student who could have chosen to go into politics or the Foreign Office but instead she chose to go into teaching because of her desire to change the world. Her idealism amounted to a desire for her students "to rule the world."

Post-war austerity destroyed the sense of optimism that people needed to rebuild their shattered lives. The UK was slowly recovering although there were signs of devastation and damaged people like Elsie Miller, labelled and billeted with strangers, mentally and physically abused, underfed, bombed, machine-gunned and deprived of all the usual joys of childhood, bomb sites to play in, rationing and prefabs to live in. They needed order and discipline.

"Shattered lives everywhere, but now the mending process was underway."

At 24 years of age, Marguerite began her career, four years after the war had ended.

Marguerite develops a loving relationship with Tony, sports' teacher through a mutual love of politics and attending political rallies and anti-bomb demonstrations; Tony enjoyed heckling the Tory politicians. He affectionately renamed her Little Lizzie Dripping.

For people like Tony and Marguerite it should have been a wonderful time to be alive with a brave new world on the horizon. Marguerite became infatuated with Tony but discovered his homosexuality when they went to see Judy Garland at the Palladium. Homosexuality was taboo and Tony felt unable to trust anyone, even Marguerite. "My whole life and my job are in jeopardy." He was offered aversion therapy, electric shocks hormone injections, the lot. He did the therapy but refused the rest.

The story quickly moves on and we are now plunged into the late 50s when Marguerite had been teaching for 10 years. It was the era of the obscene arms race. The Americans were conducting test explosives of the hydrogen bomb. The couple went to a meeting with the historian AJP Taylor followed by a CND march where Marguerite met Jimmy and Stan ex RAF. Jimmy had been awarded the DFC for his bravery although the truth suggests otherwise when he reveals it to Marguerite.

At 30, Marguerite felt that her career was stagnating and she was becoming too complacent. Tony wanted to work in a new comprehensive, more in keeping with his working class roots and he persuades Marguerite into joining him. Six years on, we are immersed into the Swinging Sixties when Marguerite meets up with Jimmy. He is feckless but irresistible and they embark on a sexual journey. Simultaneously, Tony finds himself a bono homi, a ballet dancer called Donald who soon moves into Tony's flat and transforms it with original and expensive paintings. They settle into middle-aged contentment for a short while.

Once she loses some interest in politics, Marguerite becomes impassioned with the wave of feminism that was sweeping the country. At this point in time she was approaching her fifties. This was the era of HIV, the death of Princess Diana and the invasion of Afghanistan.

We have a number of flashbacks to the time of the war when Marguerite was in the Resistance and she had fallen in love with Marcel, the love of her life. There are constant reflections of the brutal killings of innocents as well as traitors, sometimes it is difficult to tell them apart. They are all victims of war. Manuel suspected she had a cause, a desire to fight for a future in England post-war. when he just wanted to leave it all behind and he let her go to fulfil her dreams: "I will always love you. Till the day I die. You must follow your dream. I don't belong in it."

It takes her 50 years before she decides to return to France, disillusioned with her life in England and extremely lonely. She goes in search of her lost love, wanting to discover if Marcel is still alive.

The story is readable although it races on too quickly and Marguerite can be infuriating with her lifelong campaign to send the working class girls to universities against their families' wishes when she has made some sacrifices in her own life. It's almost as if she has repressed her own future happiness at the expense of promoting equality for her students, especially the girls. There is some light at the end of the tunnel although she suffers some acute personal tragedies, enough to send her into a spiral of depression for a while.

Publisher: Bloomsbury.   ISBN: 978-1-4088-4360-4.

REVIEW it by Carol Naylor.

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