The actress’s first novel, we know she can write from her autobiographical work, the award-winning The Two of Us about her life with John Thaw amongst them. This is a chronicle of English society through the second half of the 20th century seen through the life of Marguerite struggling to recover from her experiences with the French Resistance during the Second World War. We go through the lot from her degree from Cambridge (one of the first women to get one) to Aldermaston marches, drugs, hippies, punks, Churchill’s funeral, women’s lib, the permissive society, frozen food, gay liberation, AIDS; you name it, Marguerite was involved. But she must leave all that to find her happiness. I think the author has had great fun remembering it all.
It is 1948 and the young and beautiful Marguerite Carter has lost her parents and survived a terrifying war, working for the SOE behind enemy lines. She returns to England to be one of the first women to receive a degree from the University of Cambridge. Now she pins back her unruly auburn curls, draws a pencil seam up her legs, ties the laces on her sensible black shoes, and sets out towards her future as an English teacher in a girls’ grammar school. Outside the classroom Britain is changing fast, and Miss Carter finds herself caught up in social upheaval, swept in and out of love and forging deep, enduring friendships.
