I only review books on this blog by or about people I know. I met Lucilla Andrews at her daughter's funeral five years ago. Her daughter, Veronica Crichton, was one of the finest people I knew. We met in 1977 when working together in the press room on a tough by-election in Birmingham.Veronica became a great friend and even played a small but critical part in Methodism - I bought her into the National Children's Home to train senior staff in handling the media just before we launched the acclaimed "Children in Danger" Campaign.
Veronica mentioned that her mother was a writer and I was delighted to find that my own mother was one of her most enthusiastic fans. Lucilla Andrews is credited with having created the hospital romance genre.
This had all slipped my mind until a few years ago when I read of suggestions that Atonement by Ian McEwan had actually been lifted from Lucilla Andrew's autobiography. McEwan is another author I take an interest in: he and I were both on the student union council at the University of Sussex when it was chaired by one Dudley Coates, immediate past President of the Connexion.
Well yesterday I had to go to York by train on business and just happened to see a new edition of No Time For Romance on sale in WHSmith which I bought on impulse for old times sake. I read it within thirty six hours, it was the sort of book that is difficult to put down.
Mrs Andrews describes her life during that difficult period when Britain stood alone against Hitler and later as London faced the flying bomb threat. Us "baby boomers" took a jaundiced view about the Second World War. Time in adult conversations was always divided into three portions - before the war, during the war and after the war.
My own mother was in London during the blitz, though briefly evacuated with the Mother's Hospital in Clapton to Willesley Castle in Derbyshire to give birth to my elder bother. Reading Lucilla Andrew's account of life in London at the time has really opened my eyes to what she went through.
Practically every page of the book is packed with real, bloody red raw emotion. Men are conditioned to see war in terms of heroics and tactics. This book describes, for example, what it is like to assist at the birth of two babies in the midst of an air raid. Too few books about war are written by women.
Next year, if I am invited to lead a Remembrance Service I think I shall ask some young women to read extracts from this book.
No Time For Romance by Lucilla Andrews Corgi Books price £7.99
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