Featured on The Book Show on Sky Arts on 5 March 2009.

The journalist and broadcaster at long last turns her hand to fiction with this story set in the Britain of 1942. This is a lovely novel, very evocative of the time, and contains all the ingredients you would expect from a wartime saga - romance, heroism, pain and loss. Actions and consequences will effect those involved now and and future generations. Lets hope there are more novels to come.

Synopsis

ALL THE NICE GIRLS captures the danger and excitement of wartime Britain with a sweeping story of heroic deeds and painful separations, illicit love and battles at sea, and above all, of the poignancy of longing and loss. It is a big, wonderful, romantic wartime novel. 1942, and the war is not going well.

As part of the war effort the Ashworth Grammar School for Girls signs up for the Merchant Navy's Ship Adoption Scheme. The headmistress, who lost her lover in the First World War, believes the project will broaden the horizons of her girls, especially Polly and Jen, bright sixth formers eager to live and love despite it all. Then Josh Percival, captain of the adopted ship, the SS Treverran, comes with his men to visit Ashworth.

The choices that follow will disrupt all their lives, reverberating even to the next generation, when, decades later, life and love are on the line again ...

About the Author

A prominent figure in TV and the arts in Britain, Joan Bakewell has been a broadcaster for over forty years, a print journalist for over twenty years, and has published her autobiography, The Centre of the Bed. ALL THE NICE GIRLS  is her first novel. She was made a Dame in 2008. More books by this author Author 'Like for Like' recommendation