Book You May Have Missed (#14)

London Belongs To Me by Norman Collins (1945)

 

The story begins a couple of days before Christmas 1938 and end on Christmas day 1940 and tells of the up and downs of the various residents of Mrs Vizzard’s lodging house at 10 Dulcimer Street in south London over those two eventful years.

If you have been reading these book and film posts you will have realised that I particularly like stories set in real locations at specific times and that this book ticks both boxes in a bold font. Although you won’t find Dulcimer Street in an A to Z, it is there, made up of three-story terraces of early Victorian vintage, far less grand than they had been but still respectable,  somewhere between Kennington and Walworth.

The occupants of the house include a newly retired accountant, his wife and daughter; an actress come Mayfair Club cloakroom girl; a podgy postal sorter; a widow and her son who is a garage mechanic by day, petty crook by night and manages to get himself arrested for murder; a clairvoyant of dubious reputation and even a (very) incompetent German spy. It is a mixture of social satire, humour, pathos, tragedy and domestic melodrama told from each and everyone’s point of view along with some bits where the author talks directly to the reader – ‘Before we get on to the Dulcimer Street lot, come up to Central Station, Leeds, for a moment. It won’t take long.’

At the time of the book publication, Norman Collins was in charge of the restarting of BBC Television following  World War II and went on to be involved with the launching of Independent Television in 1955. He wrote 16 books but ‘London Belongs To Me’ is the one for which he is remembered.

I have deliberately not mentioned the Alastair Sim film of 1948 because I want to save that for a separate post.