Mr Josser shook his head. So far as he and Hitler were concerned they seemed to get along without telling each other anything. For the Mrs Josser there is also her brother to worry about – Uncle Henry – a bicycling Socialist greengrocer who is apt to appear on the doorstep at any moment with a fiery sermon on the threats that loom from the deteriorating situation in Europe. Uncle Henry and Mr J are luminaries in something called the South London Parliament which meets weekly to mirror the debates and activities of the government on the other side of the Thames. If you enjoyed London Belongs to Me, you might like Sam Selvon's The Lonely Londoners, also available in Penguin Modern Classics. Your flight is now boarding! Join Alex Sinclair for a life-changing, trans-Atlantic journey. London Belongs to Me is a coming-of-age story about friendship, following your dreams, and learning when to let go … and when to hang on.

No one in Dulcimer Street knew anything about Mrs. Vizzard's private life. Indeed, at first glance, it seemed that there couldn't be any. But it was there, alright. And pretty highly coloured. Mrs. Vizzard was a Spiritualist. One of the great city novels: a sprawling celebration of the comedy, the savagery, the eccentricity and the quiet heroism at the heart of ordinary London life' Welcome to 10 Dulcimer Street, to the lodging house owned by Mrs. Vizzard. In this book, we meet the lodgers and follow them over a 2 year period- 1938-1940- the eve of WWII through to the beginning. Alex is a girl looking to escape her rapidly deteriorating life in Florida after the devastation of being cheated on by her longtime boyfriend. As a recent college graduate, she's determined to make her name for herself in London's theater sphere as a playwrite. However, when she crosses the pond, things don't quite go according to plan. Alex finds herself questioning her decision to run away from Florida after her friend and roommate's conniving girlfriend makes her feel unwelcome in the city she loves. She didn't expect to find herself lonely in London upon arrival.Alex is so remarkable, in fact, that despite bringing about the end of her friend Harry’s four-year relationship and recent engagement to Olivia, he’s thanking her within a week and apologizing for how much she had to go through. An instant connection to the main character of any book always wins me over. Alex Sinclair is no exception. A nerd, a fangirl, in love with London, eats all the cheese, and struggles with anxiety, yup I can certainly relate. The fact that she is also a playwright is really interesting. We often see characters who write books or are actresses, but the playwright aspect is more unique and I liked all the theater nods and history. The diverse cast that makes up this book are each in their own way a fun addition to the book. Without Lucy or Freddie this story would not be the same. Lucy is so spunky and unfiltered that she brings a raw element to the book. Freddie is too funny and I love seeing what he has to say next. Not to mention Mark who may just be a new book boyfriend for me, swoon! Add into the mix the girl who resembles a high school enemy that you love to hate and I think you have your bases covered. This is without even touching the fact that a girl who thinks “You can do this” is an impressively deep self-help phrase she coined herself somehow managed to write three wildly successful plays and become the darling of London theater when her unedited play is given a huge release – again, without self-promotion, because Alex is the paragon of humility and wouldn't stoop to such mean arts.

Spatially the novel is enclosed largely by the boundaries of SE5 –‘Number 10 ... in cross section, opened like a doll’s house, you’d have seen how narrowly separated the family existences (are)’– almost all of the action takes place in an area delimited by a broad ellipse drawn between the Underground stations of Chalk Farm and The Oval with occasional forays into the City (to work as typists or clerks), to Wimbledon Common (for a spot of unpremeditated murder), or to Brighton and its satellites (holidays, and an escape from the war). Dulcimer Street remains as the fulcrum of the social and the spatial throughout – but, where, then is Dulcimer Street? There is one major difference with respect to Sillitoe’s vernacular novels: his characters are resolutely, rebelliously, proletarian; but the residents of 10 Dulcimer Street, especially the landlady, wield their shabby genteel (with the accent on the former adjective) lower middle class manners like weapons, and keep their proverbial aspidistras flying like battle colours. It is the perfect habitat for retired clerks, aspiring typists, faded actresses, failed dairy managers and self-sufficient (but only just) widows of property. Connie is acceptable only through by her connection with the well-heeled at her Mayfair Club. Percy Boon is a car mechanic and the closest we come to anything vaguely proletarian, but he is saved by the fact that he is as apolitical as it is possible to be: an aspiration to petty crime being arguably the classic working class Tory occupation (the Kray twins were members of the Bethnal Green Conservative Association). An honest navvy or a coal heaver, however well paid, simply wouldn’t have been allowed across the threshold. Secondary characters are always hard to do; you either get too little or too much of them, but I think Middleton has nailed it here. Freddie, Lucy, Mark, Tom and even Olivia were fully rounded characters that could easily have novels of their own (which I'm still hoping for!) While I'm not generally a fan of random chapters in other characters' POVs, the one chapter from Olivia was actually really helpful in understanding her motivations, which I think was necessary for her character. But then... By the time war broke out, I cared deeply for all of them and became increasingly fond of them all. I worried about whether they'd survive the war, I wanted them to be happy and I wanted to hear how their stories ended.

The book has a cinematic feel as the the author talks directly to the reader, inviting him to observe these actions / scenarios. Though I have to say, even as a non-native english speaker I did find some typos, but meh, who cares. Norman Collins (an author I’ve never encountered before),weaves together these narratives magnificently well, creating believable characters – with both flaws and virtues – and having them deal with life in a way which seems so real, you can barely detect the author’s hand. Not all the plots work (Dr Otto Hapfel, for example, really goes nowhere), but reading this feels like an excellent, empathetic slice of living history. From there, things don't get better for her. She has to live in a ridiculously small room in her friends' flat and she also makes her first rival on the first day.

Every so often some ambitious writer comes up with an epic novel to sum up London for us – Bleak House (1853), White Teeth (1999), Capital (2012) – and filling the gap is this massive delightful soapy sprawl. The introduction tell us that London Belongs to Me (I love that title) is around the top of Division Two as far as novels go : Connie was an annoying busybody beyond compare, Mrs Josser was mean, Mr Puddy's comedy fat-man voice grated and Percy deserved what he got. Mr Puddy just puddies along from one low status job to the next, never abandoning his briefcase, a relic of his better days as a dairy manager and a badge of his former respectability (in which he now bears his array of, mostly tinned, delicacies to and from work). 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). Through the charlatan Squales, we are introduced to a minor constellation of astralists: the South London Spiritualist Movement and the South London Psychical Society as well their transpontine rivals, the Finsbury Park based North London Spiritualist Club and North Kensington Spiritualist Union. The house is owned by a widowe - Mrs Vizzard. She is worried about the reputation of the house, whos rooms she lets as she doesnt want to dive into her capital. She finds love with an italian spirtualised cad. London Belongs to Me concerns the tenants of a South London lodging house between Christmas 1938 and Christmas 1940. We are well beyond the halfway point before war is declared. Up until then we are made privy to the lives of one of the most vibrant sets of characters I have ever come across. Our familiarity with their domestic ups-and-downs means that when “the long shadow of war” finally catches up with them, and the young men start disappearing from the streets, it feels like an earthquake.PATRICIA ROC QUITS PICTURE". The News. Vol.49, no.7, 595. Adelaide. 6 December 1947. p.1 . Retrieved 30 August 2017– via National Library of Australia. In 2019, she was named BEST CANADIAN AUTHOR at the RWA's Toronto Romance Writers 'Northern Hearts' Awards for UNTIL THE LAST STAR FADES. She is also the author of LONDON BELONGS TO ME, LONDON, CAN YOU WAIT?, SAY HELLO, KISS GOODBYE, and the Christmas in London romance, THE CERTAINTY OF CHANCE, which earned a coveted Kirkus starred review and had Entertainment Weekly raving, naming it to their list of the best holiday romances of 2021. a b c Chapman, J. (2022). The Money Behind the Screen: A History of British Film Finance, 1945-1985. Edinburgh University Press p 354. Income is in terms of producer's share of receipts. If that line didn't hook me, nothing could have. I felt such a connection to the main character, Alex, because our personalities seem eerily similar. Is Jacquelyn Middleton the pen name of one of my friends? ;) It's like she knows me. Norman Collins (1907-1982) was a British writer, and later a radio and television executive, who was responsible for creating Woman's Hour on BBC Radio 4, and became one of the major figures behind the establishment of the Independent Television (ITV) network in the UK. 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).