It must now be about a year since I read Margaret Kennedy’s ‘The Feast’ and started to notice just how much I was enjoying fiction (both detective/crime and ‘non genre’) from the years immediately after WW2. How the cataclysm of that event altered the nature of many writers’ output and how the understandable preoccupation with What Comes Next manifested itself. It’s something of a disappointment then to see that there is, on the surface, little of this in Clifford Witting’s 1947 ‘Let X Be The Murderer’, in which Inspector Charlton makes another appearance, this time solving one of those kinds of ‘impossible crimes’ so beloved of the inter-war years detective puzzler. In some ways this rather positions ‘Let X…’ as one of the weaker of the Charlton/Witting books that have so far been reissued by Galileo Books, although it must also be pointed out that this is no great criticism, for Witting is surely amongst the very best writers of detective fiction in any period. Yet ‘Let X…’ feels as if Witting may have been pressured by a publisher who was rather keen to have a more, ah, ‘traditional’ yarn in their catalogue. One can picture the publisher having Witting over for lunch (a meagre affair, in the post-war years, one imagines) and saying “now then, Clifford old boy, let’s have Inspector Charlton make an appearance right at the start shall we? No point leaving him lurking in the background until we’re two thirds of the way through the book, now, is there? And what about a bit of that ‘Impossible Crime’ stuff? And a Country House… Y’see dear boy (and at this point I imagine the publisher will polish his prince-nez) it’s important that we re-establish some Rules, don’t you know. Hmmm?” To which one imagines Witting inwardly groaning and, thinking of the trials and tribulations of Austerity, grinning and bearing it. Perhaps I am being altogether too harsh on the imaginary publisher and too lenient on Witting. Perhaps Witting himself thought that Tradition ought to be invoked… “Structure! That’s what we need Witting. STRUCTURE dammit!”

And structure you shall have. For ‘Let X…’ is broken neatly into four sections that distill the investigative process: Theorem; Hypothesis; Construction; Proof. In another’s hands this approach would risk being unutterably dull, but Witting is never that, and so ‘Let X…’ rises above many procedural plodders with allusions to ghosts and with undercurrents driven by jealousy, vengeance, greed and, uh, Class Warfare. It is, of course, with these threads of Class, Position and Wealth that Witting positions ‘Let X…’ within the traditional inter-war forms whilst acknowledging the uncertainties of The Future. He carries this off admirably because he is such a fine writer, but one cannot help but feel that a marginally more experimental approach might have yielded greater dividends. “Less structure!” as the heckler once shouted at Huggy Bear. But only a little less, if you would be so kind…

There is a strong possibility that my slight disappointment with ‘Let X Be The Murderer’ has been coloured simply by the fact that I find myself, if not wearying of the detective/crime genre, but at least finding other seams of literature to be currently more enjoyable. Most significantly these would be the ones mined by the Middlebrow women writers of the inter and immediate post-WW2 years. I do use that categorisation in the broadest and most positive of manners of course, and largely as a result of so many wonderful books having been salvaged in the past decade or more by the ‘Furrowed Middlebrow’ imprint. It is tragic to think that, following the death earlier this year of publisher Rupert Heath, we may not see further titles unearthed, but in reality the catalogue is so extensive that there is enough to keep one happy for a long time to come. There are numerous D.E. Stevenson’s, Susan Scarlett’s and Elizabeth Eliot’s still to explore for me, whilst in recent weeks I turned my attention once again to Stella Gibbons, whose ‘The Weather at Tregulla’ I read whilst on a four day trip down to The Lizard.

Previously I have written a little harshly about Gibbon’s ‘classic’ ‘Cold Comfort Farm’ and drawn criticism for doing so. Fair enough. Yet I still stand by my belief that the book is too long and that the jokes wear thin rather quickly. I blame Gibbon’s youth when writing it, myself. There are few things more tiresome than the wit of a an intelligent young person poking fun at things the older generations venerate, except when one is young oneself. Then, it is the ‘wit’ of these older generations nodding sagely and saying ‘you’ll see…’ that is tiresome beyond words. Naturally I plead guilty as charged to that particular crime.

Whatever. I stand by my position of having enjoyed ‘Westwood’ and ‘Here Be Dragons’ considerably more than ‘Cold Comfort Farm’, whilst ‘The Weather at Tregulla’ may well be my favourite Gibbons so far. Perhaps reading it whilst being generally in and around the locale where the book is set helped, but Gibbons does a tremendous job of conjuring the Cornish land and seascapes regardless. Published and set in the early 1960s, the book already laments a Cornwall being disfigured by the scourge of Tourism and Outsiders who rather tiresomely both celebrate and diminish it by their actions. It’s a book that perceptively recognises the inevitable pull/push of place and people on The Young, whilst also making rather scathing digs at Class (an English infatuation, and understandably so, one has to admit) and perceptions of the, ah, Artistic Temperament. It is also a Love Story, a Romance of fine quality in which expectations are adhered to and standards upheld, at least up until the point where they aren’t… For, as with E.M. Delafield, the ending of ‘Tregulla’ is a difficult blending of tragedy and happiness, where the nature of both is called into question. I rather like to think that there is something here of Gibbons casting a beady eye over her younger self and saying something about how Things Aren’t That Simple. Even when they are.

Now I am not sure if Mollie Panter-Downes would fall into the category of ‘Middlebrow’, but I do know that I have devoured three of her books in rapid succession. Her 1946 novel ‘One Fine Day’ ranks up with Margaret Kennedy’s ‘The Feast’ in being one of the best post-WW2 novels I have read. It is a deceptively soft novel, one where the hardships of daily existence rub up against glorious observations of nature. In the first chapter there is a delicious depiction of Barrow Down above the village of Wealding, where in spring “dog-violets filled small blue lakes in the bleached grass, followed later by the pink and white restharrow, clean as sprigged chintz, and the great golden candlesticks of mulleins.” I myself am notoriously ignorant of the names of plants (C needs to remind me of what everything is called each time we walk along the hedgerows or I pick through the terrific over-filled magic of our/her garden) but I do so enjoy seeing them conjured on the pages of books. Also, there is a magnificent mullein in the raised bed outside my studio window, so that one at least I know (until I forget)…

Barrow Down, then, is immediately positioned by Panter-Downes as emblematic of timelessness: “Up here, on the empty hilltop, something said I am England. I will remain.” It’s an important point that she is making too, for it marks landscape as the thing that both holds and projects a sense of identity. Certainly it is a landscape with ancient human intervention, but this is a relationship softened by time to being obfuscated and mythical. The hill, then, dominates the landscape as it does the book in a vivid yet gentle way. The story may revolve around the difficulties endured by people in the aftermath of war, specifically the comforts of the middle-classes that seem to have been eroded from both ends, but the magical energies of the hillside suggest that all such notions of class and position evaporate in their presence. And I say it is a’ deceptively soft’ novel because whilst it feels rather quietly optimistic in its outlook, the eighty years or so since its initial creation rather lend it a depressing air. One cannot help but read it now and despair rather at How We Ended Up Where/How We Are. In England. In the world. One wonders why/how Human’s didn’t learn. But then they/we never do/did. I blame the teachers.

There is too a vivid sense of this in Panter-Downe’s ‘London War Notes’, which is a collection of her ‘letters from London’ originally published as a regular column in ‘The New Yorker’. Whilst such pieces retrospectively suffer somewhat from that fact that We Know How It Ends, ‘London War Notes’ nevertheless hold one’s attention in riveting style. What is perhaps surprising to a 21st Century eye is the degree in which there is criticism of certain strands of British government throughout the span of the war. This criticism, given the target audience, rarely if ever falls on Churchill himself, but it does often extend to the various other positions and characters, both political and military. One rarely hears of such disgruntlement in Official Histories of the home front during WW2 (particularly so in the polarised post-Brexit context) so seeing it so openly stated takes one’s breath away a little. Similarly, whilst there is clearly a need for the pieces to uphold the air of ‘London Can Take It’, there are also nods to the fact that whilst this might be true, it’s also a jolly hard life, even whilst daily life goes on. Indeed, it’s the regular references to things like the theatre and sporting events that draw one up a little rapidly. Somehow the notion of a ‘cultural’ life going in in wartime feels rather alien; the idea of cricket matches against the Australians still taking place at Lords in 1943 something of an affront. One can imagine the indignant cries of the retired Colonels: “Why are these young men not in the Forces?! Why are they bowling cricket balls when they could be hurling hand grenades?!” And then immediately forgetting themselves by adding “oh, fine stroke… fine stroke… well played, Sir. Well played indeed.”

Much of what she put into her ‘London War Notes’ surfaces in the largely previously un-published short stories collected in ‘Good Evening Mrs Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes’. Bookended by two ‘Letter from London’ pieces, these short slices of fiction are terrific reading, even for someone who usually struggles with the short story form. Whilst filled with the author’s perceptive journalistic eye for detail, the stories add an appealing veneer of playfulness and imagination that lift them, in my opinion, above the ‘War Notes’ in terms of ultimate reading pleasure. Apparently Panter-Downes herself was rather dismissive of her fiction, disowning all of her novels except ‘One Fine Day’, and preferring instead to see herself as a journalist. There is nothing wrong with that of course, but there is more than enough evidence in these short stories and in ‘One Fine Day’ to suggest that she may have significantly undersold herself as a brilliant purveyor of fiction.

And then, finally, if we are to consider WW2 and imaginative fiction, there is Barbara Euphan Todd’s wonderful ‘Miss Ranskill Comes Home’. Published, like ‘One Fine Day’, in 1946, ‘Miss Ranskill’ takes as its premise the idea of a woman returned to England in 1943 after four years stranded on a desert island with only a working class Carpenter who dies before Miss Ranskill can take to the ocean on the boat he has crafted. This isn’t a spoiler, incidentally, as you will see when you read the opening pages of the book… On one level of course all this desert island stuff is a preposterous notion, and there are points indeed during her, ah, ‘reintegration’ where Miss Ranskill/Euphan Todd acknowledges this in a kind of meta-fictional nod to the audience, but it is SUCH a preposterous idea that it works tremendously well. Miss Ranskill’s struggles to re-establish herself within the turmoil of the war-torn Homefront allow us to reflect on the absurdities of life under duress that populations allow, indeed encourage themselves to accept, perpetuate and ultimately celebrate. Euphan Todd indeed seems to take great delight in showing up the hypocrisy of some of those involved in keeping the home fires burning, and in doing so delivers a withering critique of class structure that is only lightly clothed in the tattered outfit of humour and absurdity. As in ‘One Fine Day’ there is something too of the missed simplicity of nature in ‘Miss Ranskill’ that appeals enormously. Perhaps this is not entirely unexpected in the work of someone more famous for the creation of the Worzel Gummidge character and stories, but that’s for someone much more familiar with those books to say. All I know is that ‘Miss Ranskill Comes Home’ is one of the most unusual and marvellously engaging pieces of WW2 fiction I have come across.

Now, what comes next?