I’ve just bought a book that set me on a train of thought going back quite a few years. I first became aware of it when it was broadcast on the BBC (I think it was on the Light Programme, which goes to show how old it is). I was only about 11 or 12 but it was on just after I got home from the Scouts on a Tuesday evening and I was completely absorbed by these characters and their stories. It’s called Sorrell and Son by Warren Deeping, first published in 1925.
I found it in Greenwich Library when I was about 17 and enjoyed the book as much as on the radio. Basically, before the book begins the main character, Stephen Sorrell, a decorated former World War I officer has returned from the war, divorced his wife and is seeking a job to keep himself and his son, Christopher, so that he can give his son the best education he possibly can.
I shan’t describe any more of the plot except to say that it describes an England in gentler, more innocent times, though that doesn’t mean he doesn’t encounter snobbery and experience hardships.
The book is fascinating, absorbing and the characters seem so real that the reader begins to care about them..
Another writer that captured me from the first few pages is R.F. Delderfield. I was first captivated by his 3 volume tale “A Horseman Riding By”, a tale of a soldier who returns home from the Boer War to recover from his injuries and inherits his father’s scrap metal business, something which doesn’t interest him in the slightest. Searching around for a purpose to his life he buys a large estate comprising a spacious valley in Devon. This and the subsequent two volumes in his story tells of rural Britain through the eyes and experiences of the valley’s inhabitants up to the death of Winston Churchill.
Everybody to whom I’ve recommended these books have adored them, and then there are more stories - The Avenue, a two book tale of a South London suburb and its inhabitants from the ending of the First World War to the aftermath of the Second World War.
Then there is To Serve Them All My Days, a novel of a young, idealistic teacher who begins work in a rural boarding school and details his life and experiences with the young men under his charge. These two volumes had me completely hooked from the first page.
Finally there is the Swann saga, the tale of Adam Swann who founds a transport business (not dissimilar to the firm Carter Paterson) in mid-19th century Britain, how he develops it, how changing technology is coped with, how the Swann family work to make the company grow until its activities cover the entire country. It ends as the rumblings of World War 1 begin to be felt throughout Europe.
There are three books in the series: God is an Englishman, Theirs was the Kingdom and Give us this Day. If you read all of Delderfield’s sagas you have a lot of absorbing and enjoyable reading ahead of you.