Glenshiels - James Lennox Kerr 1932

I surveyed the various works of JLK some years ago (here at http://eprints.worc.ac.uk/248) and am returning to his adult fiction in the 1930-40 period. He is noted as a Scottish socialist writer, which is vague enough to be not untrue.

Glenshiels (John Lane The Bodley Head, 1932) is an early work and rooted in his memories of childhood in Paisley near Glasgow. It is heralded as an outstanding Scottish novel by such as J B Priestley and Compton Mackenzie. It went into a second impression in 1932. It is now totally forgotten, such is the fickleness of public taste.

It is a story of a working class family in a small Scottish town, alert always to what other people might say about them, and keen to put on a prosperous face. The author ran away to sea just from such a place in 1916. The plot has a circularity, as we shall see, as class attitudes are reproduced across generations.

The dramatis personae are: Hector Mackinley (his first name never again mentioned) who lived with his wife and family in a three roomed tenement. Daughter Winnie was 16, son Sam aged 8. Mackinley was a bombastic bully, without a pleasant thing to say to or about his wife, and threatening to thrash his children, even spanking his daughter's naked bottom in the street. We never learn Mrs Mackinley's first name. The family relationship was based on fear. Mackinley also bullied other men, being particularly hard on 'Socialists' who in his view supported scroungers. His 'besting' of a Socialist supporter in the early pages returns throughout the book as a sort of chorus. 

The opening scene is of the Town going to church, in their best clothes and putting on their best airs and graces. This Sunday is described in ritual terms, the procession to church, the stilted conversations, the behaviour in the service, the thanking of the minister, and the procession home. This was something that is 'done' without any involvement of niceness or ethics. Bullying the socialist is part of the Mackinley Sunday ritual, as Socialists are clearly ungodly.

The after church walk also reveal attitudes and prejudices. One side of the road was considered posher than the other - you could expect very little from the folks 'over there'. Although Mrs M expressed concern about the poor bairns in the streets, Mr M had a very clear view: 

"Mackinley, to whom such poverty only made more conscious of his own worthiness, grunted impatiently, "It's their own fault ...they had as much chance as others. If they spent less in the public houses..."

The story follows Sam into adolescence, meeting Agnes and becoming a street lad. Then part 3 follows Winnie, as a shop assistant (a job she enjoys) walking out with friends and becoming the target for a grotesque lad John, a butcher's apprentice (as JLK had been once). We are not told, but get the impression, that he raped her and she fell pregnant. Although he was not pleasant even when courting, John considered himself trapped (the pregnancy was clearly Winnie's fault, done deliberately to catch him) and most surly. The wedding had to be rushed, the pregnancy never admitted but understood by everyone. Mackinley funded a lavish wedding, not out of affection but for public show. Sam got drunk and spoilt all that - we never hear the consequnces. Winnie had to give up work on marriage. Her husband John was the same bully her father was, and the same stultifying bore, to be scivied for, pampered, but never loved in return.

The story ends with a hard edge, Winnie realising that the housewife's life was very boring, and her mother visiting. Mrs M asked her outright when the baby was due. After she left, Winnie broke down, sobbing:

"The auld bitch!" she cried, despairingly. "The auld bitch... she knew all the time".

Curtain, the book ends with that expression of family tenderness. Nevertheless, Mrs M is presented as the person to be most pitied, with the realisation that her pointless life would be reproduced by her daughter Winnie.

Compton MacKenzie, Rockets Galore

Planning a trip to the Outer Hebrides, I came across Rockets Galore, the sequel to Whisky Galore, the story of what happened to a cargo of whisky wrecked on the Toddays near the Uists that was riotously filmed. Rockets Galore is a farce, true, but also a political satire. I will be brief with the story so I can comment on the satire. The government of the day (1957) wishes to set up a a rocket base and training camp in the Hebredean islands of Todday (Erisay). Such a base was set up in the Uists. To do this they must terminate the tenancies of crofters and resettle them elsewhere. Some locals can see a profit in it, others (such as those about to lose their homes) are opposed. There are public meetings, visits by bureaucrats and politicians. It is actually a fait accompli, and consultation is for no purpose. Nevertheless, government plans are thwarted. The locals realise that they become number one targets for Russian missiles; and also that their way of life would be destroyed. Readers are reminded of other imperial disasters - Nasser in Egypt, Archbishop Makarios in Cyprus.

There is a history in Scotland of clearance from crofts, often by burning families out. The politicians are unaware of people as people - they are just pawns to be moved around. Politicians are depicted as basically stupid and self-serving, hearing only what they want to hear. This is largely still true, as politicians are obsessed with their political futures. The hero of the book, Hugh changes sides and realises that politics is not an ethical way to earn a living. Sectarian religion (Catholics and Protestants) comes together, symbolised by the marriage of Hugh to a Catholic Irish folksinger. The Catholic priest sets an ethical position: rockets, praised as deterrents by governments, are designed to kill en masse. As all sides build deterrents, the chance of world disaster is increased. It is much better to talk.I remember the period well through boyhood memories in Lincolnshire. A nearby WW2 aerodrome became the base for Bloodhound surface to air missiles produced by the Bristol Aircraft Company with Ferranti's help. About 2 dozen stood pointing east, the central missile warhead clustered around with rocket burners. MacKenzie describes them as obsolete, so that the government wanted to sell them to NATO.  By the end, it is clear that political decisions can and ought to be challenged. Civil disobedience works. (Machinery is sabotaged, food and accommodation are refused). But finally, it is not the justice of the case which wins, it is the human obsession for rarity, as hordes descend to find rare birds.

Eileen Nearne SOE

The funeral took place today of Eileen Nearne in Torbay (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-11309418). Eileen was an SOE agent who chose to keep this fact a secret throughout her life.

In Sarah Helm's A Life In Secrets: the Story of Vera Atkins and the Lost Agents of SOE Vera, the home-based controller of agents, toured Europe after the war to trace what happened to lost agents. Some had died in action, others were murdered in extermination camps. Eileen escaped from Ravensbruck, and told of two other English girls who escaped. She was picked up at the end of the war by the Americans so found her story far-fetched and fanciful. Vera knew however that the parachute drop, radio communications and work with the resistance were absolutely true. In camp, she worked in the fields, then as slave labour in a munitions factory, and later on 12 hour days as a road builder. It was then that she and some French friends hid in a forest and were protected by a local priest until the Americans came.

What would we all do if we knew that world freedom depended on what we personally did or did not do? The men and women of SOE and all other services, some paying with their lives, have bequeathed us the free world that we enjoy.

Flying Officer X

During the second world war, the concept of war artist included writers and poets. I have written elsewhere in this blog about the war poet John Pudney, whom "Flying Officer X" credits as his mentor "whose friendly watchfulness and greater experience in practical Air Force matters saved both them and myself from various pitfalls" (Author's Note, 1952 Evensford Edition). The anonymous "Flying Officer X" stories were morale boosters for both air force personnel and the public, dedicated to Hilary St. George Saunders the RAF historian. Flying Officer X was in real life HE Bates (1905-1974), the novelist, with an RAF commission. Stationed with Bomber Command, flying Stirlings, he refined, by talking to crews and groundstaff,   their particular experiences into short stories published weekly in News Chronicle in 1942, bringing out the real story of battle. The first volume of collected stories was called The Greatest People in the World after a story of the same name. The pilot is from a poor agricultural family, who paid his way through Grammar School to become a Pilot Officer. [He would actually have been a Sergeant Pilot, not coming from Public School]. He hears that pilots are the greatest people in the world, but after his parents are bombed and killed, comes to realise that it is the common working people who farm the land who best deserve this description. The second volume had the title How Sleep the Brave: the story of that name follows a Stirling crew after ditching in the North Sea, surviving snow, ice and burns in the attempt to reach England again. The last sentence hints at bravery: "and they will go out again". The Beginning of Things describes bow amputation (of an arm) can mark the beginning of a new life, not the end. The main character flies again with prosthetic arm full of clever gadgets. A edition of both collections was called Something in the Air (Cape, Knopf). Over 100,000 copies in all were sold, though HE Bates did not earn royalties for them.  In other RAF postings he wrote  There's Freedom in the Air for HMSO,  The Night Battle of Britain (never published) and The Battle of the Flying Bomb (published only after rediscovery in the Public Records Office in 1994). The Flying Officer X stories were reissued in paperback by Vintage Classics (Random House) in 2002.

James Hilton 1900-1956.

A few thoughts on Nothing So Strange 1948. James Hilton is best known for Goodbye Mr Chips, a story drawn from his school experiences, and Far Horizons with his great invention Shangri La. He was a Hollywood screen writer as well as a novelist, who smoked himself to an early death. Nothing So Strange is about the war, set in wartime. Its theme is waste of talent through unreasonable suspicion. A talented physicist for very complex reasons was working for a pro-Nazi boss in Vienna, later in Berlin, just before war was declared. He was therefore ignored both as a scientist and a pilot in the airforce, considered to hot to handle. However his work if recognized in Germany could have produced a nuclear bomb by 1943, and equally could have contributed to the American effort. Instead, he was under psychiatric care, hounded both by psychiatrists and security forces who would have been more fruitfully employed elsewhere. His mentor through this was his student, probably to become his wife/partner. She knows, as we the reader knows, that he had an affair with her mother, but he does not know she knows, but her father does. This all keeps the war reflection steaming hot. He had a guilty secret, that he finally reveals: not murder or adultery, or anything so predictable. But he had falsified his data before leaving Berlin so his discoveries could not be misused. As a scientist,  this compromise whilst necessary was a matter of shame.

SOE and Vera Atkins

A recent trip to Cornwall brought me to Zennor, home of the Tinners Arms with Tinners Ale, the church with the mermaid, and a small Cornish life museum. DH Lawrence had been here in 1915-16 with his German wife Frieda, cousin of Baron Manfred von Richthofen the air ace. Not a combatant on health grounds, the locals were suspicious and persuaded them to leave. The story, and the bitterness of the experience, is found in Kangaroo. In the church is a memorial to the Burma Star Association, with a book to inscribe memories and appreciation. The Association has been very active in linking and championing those soldiers with traumatic memories from their youth. Percy our former neighbour, was one of these, buried eventually with full Burma Star honours. The book tells a similar story of servicemen remembered but now dead. One piece of graffiti condemned war, preferring I guess to live in a fascist dictatorship.

The stimulus for this post is my fruitless search for the gravestone of Vera Atkins. I remember seeing it some years ago, but could not find it again. Vera was the key administrator at Special Operations Executive (SOE) in Baker Street. Jewish, a refugee from Romania, former family name Rosenberg, she always had to cope with feelings of vulnerability. She ran operations involving both men and women, but it was the SOE women who caught the popular imagination after the war. The film on Odette and book on Madeleine have given this group of women mythic status. Noor Inayat Khan, from a Sufi family, alias Nora Baker, alias Madeleine is a personal favorite, a woman with deformed feet because of foot binding as a child, a pacifist who refused to take weapons on a mission, and who refused to reveal any information under torture.  The reality is that they were doing a dangerous job, for reasons of their own, because of ideals they were prepared to die for. Any some of them did, either on the ground or in Ravensbruck concentration camp, or Buchanwald.  After the war she hunted down their killers and worked with the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal. She chose to be buried with her brother Guy in Zennor. The story is well told by Sarah Helm, A Life in Secrets. The official historian of SOW is MRD Foot.

Heming and Marsh again

Chance finds, bought together today in Cirencester were Jack Heming's Blue Wings (1938) and DE Marsh's The Airmen of the Island (1945). Since the dealer had bought them as a pair, his source must have known the connection, that they were husband and wife. Dorothy Eileen Marsh was the birthname of Mrs (Jack) Heming who used many pen-names. It started as a means of surviving the depression, a visit to London, and perhaps to WE Johns, told them that the future was in aeroplane stories for children. Jack tended to be more action-oriented and Eileen more relationship focused - although Eileen was fully capably or writing blood and thunder action stories, particularly using the Guy Dempster alias, war stories for boys. See my other blogs on this family via the labels.

The Airmen of the Island  focuses on an Orkney teenager Rob Ker (age 17) who is master of a tiny island, Megg, who by saving a ditched Australian pilot early in the war found his way into flying with Coastal Command. The story featured Sunderland Flying Boats, introduced 1938. Germans take over Megg to fortify it and threaten Scapa Flow. Rob escapes to warn the RAF and a counter attack takes the island back, which then is fortified as an RAF base. But, the Germans take it over again... The first Nazis were callous and brutal; the second group were more polite (with "false politeness") - "you fought a good fight". The dead are accepted and not mourned. "Bill and Cleaver are gone" - "That's too bad"... "Let me gather our dead". The other planes at the base are Defiants, which are depicted as newer and deadlier than Spitfires. In fact they were not so. Built by Boulton and Paul, they had gun turrets rather than forward guns, so 109s soon realised that they could attack head-on with relative impunity. In the story, 3 Defiants were enough to knock out a flight of bombers and their attendant fighters. In real life, Defiants were put onto night-patrol duty, at which the excelled. The story also introduces an aircraft carrier and Navy forces, with Swordfish and Skua planes - the Fleet Air Arm, not so named in the book. This is a favorite topic in her Guy Dempster thrillers. One other detail, an occasional character is named Carter, probably Eileen's best known pen-name (Dorothy Carter).













Jack wrote less, and paused as he joined the forces in 1939. His Blue Wings is uncomfortable reading, as four WW1 flying aces and one youth, Ray, fly to Spain to support the "nationalists" (Franco's fascist insurgents) against the elected socialist  ("communist") government who are depicted as Russian inspired, with a People's Committee to punish failure or opposition. Jack  was anti-communist rather than pro-fascist - their side are termed 'nationalist' and the government are seen as Russian invaders. At the end of unlikely and intrepid adventures in that blood-thirsty civil war, they returned home alive and joined the RAF.  De Havilland Dragons (biplane, built 1932) and Mew Gulls (1936) are the planes mentioned. The Percival Mew Gull was a single engined racing plane and only 6 were built, top speed over 250 mph - hot news in air racing when the story was being written. The back blue plane on the cover is a rough approximation, and the illustration on page 85. Why was one of these highly expensive machines owned by a youngster and based in a temporary county council airfield?  And then for a second to arrive there...  The illustration on page 197 is perhaps a biplane Dragon. The twin engined blue monoplane on the dustjacket is a Monospar (ST10 perhaps, picture below).
The red biplanes (make unidentified) belong to the Spanish socialist government and carry the Spanish roundel. In the story most are flown by Russians.


 Jack's story does not in fact glorify war but gets young readers ready for a war that by 1937 was inevitable. WE Johns announced this constantly in Popular Flying, emphasising the need for the government to prepare. Ray entered the civil war for adventure, without any political ideals. He soon sees war as 'conscienceless'. Dogfights may be a game - a Russian ace comes down to give him some more petrol so they can carry on - but it is a deadly game, the objective to down planes and probably kill the pilot. The leaders of both sides drool with anger and solve problems by killing. War's horrors are hinted at, and war itself condemned subliminally but constantly. A boy needs skill and a level head to navitage through with higher ideals. They all end up joining the RAF preparing for the world war to counter aggression that is invariably coming. 

Eileen unfortunately died early, in 1948, having brought up four children as well as writing 120 books. Jack later wrote after Eileen's death under her pen-names for a few volumes between 1948 and 1960.