Anne Wellman, author — Books by Monica Dickens

In the 1930s upper-class young Monica Dickens, great-granddaughter of Charles, turned her back on the world of debutante balls and parties to work as a cook and skivvy – greatly to the shock of her family. She very quickly learned the difference between a quick course in French cuisine and real life: dropped roasts, broken crockery, fallen souffles and nasty employers – but also the pleasures of a bit of banter with the grocer's boy. One Pair of Hands is a classic, a thoroughly entertaining memoir of life upstairs and downstairs in the early 1930s.

’Glorious entertainment.’ Daily Mail

‘Riotously amusing.’ The Times

Flowers on the Grass

After a tragedy in his life the hero of Flowers on the Grass, moody artist Daniel, moves from job to job, each time meeting different people in a different setting. We never hear anything from Daniel’s point of view, only from that of those who encounter him, and through their stories his torment and grief slowly reveal themselves. No reader ever fails to fall in love with him. Booker Prize winner Antonia Byatt has a particular liking for the book, especially its first chapter, which finishes with a shocking and completely unexpected turn of events. Monica's handling of the narrative remained forever printed on her mind by its technical mastery, Byatt declared, with the events conveyed in two 'precise, perfectly imagined, economical sentences'.

‘Monica Dickens relishes her assortment of characters as much as her great-grandfather relished his Wellers and Pecksniffs...’ Patricia Highsmith

Kate and Emma

Kate and Emma deals with the role of poverty in the ill-treatment of children, seen through the eyes of middle-class magistrate's daughter Emma but directly experienced by slum waif Kate. The two young women form an unlikely yet believable friendship, but their paths diverge as Emma finds a career and a suitable marriage while for Kate there is only teenaged pregnancy, too many children and a slide into squalor and despair. The novel moves towards the inevitable fate of Sammy, Kate's young son, whom she slowly starts to mistreat as she herself was mistreated as a child. What will happen to Sammy - and Kate and Emma's friendship?

Kate and Emma has been called Monica's most accomplished work. Within ten days of its publication in October 1964 the book went into a third printing, and was later dramatised for BBC Radio 4's Saturday Night Theatre. Kate and Emma, said BBC producer and director Douglas Allen, was written '...with such human warmth and understanding, relieved, quite often, with flashes of humour, that it is a masterpiece'.

A 'masterly, intricate counterpoint of two Londoners' lives...’ Sunday Telegraph

Joy and Josephine

After early years as the adopted daughter of a grocer's wife in the Portobello Road, Josephine makes a sensational shift to high society and the guardianship of a fastidious baronet when it appears she may really be his niece switched at birth. She changes her name to Joy and gets suitably engaged to the handsome son of a landed family, but is suddenly jerked back to her former life when a drunken Irishwoman appears claiming to be her real mother.

As the novel progresses Joy (or Josephine) is left still in doubt about her real identity and still mourning the love of her life, first encountered as a child in the Portobello Road. More surprises follow but Joy/Josephine has developed a sturdy individuality which finally makes her independent of her origin and surroundings: after trying to be the right person for everyone else, she ultimately succeeds in being herself.

‘Witty, dramatic, and funny.’ The Tablet

The Fancy

A shy, rabbit-breeding young foreman, Edward, oversees a bench of women and girls at an aircraft factory during WWII. The story centres around the lives and loves of both Edward and the women (after whom, according to the vagaries of their characters, he names his rabbits). The unhappily married Edward has growing feelings for a timid young girl on his bench, but he plays it straight, unwilling to break up his marriage to the unpleasant Connie. Will Edward get his chance at happiness?

Author Rebecca West considered The Fancy a very accomplished work, with characters of real flesh and blood that were as real as any in the novels of Monica's great-grandfather Charles Dickens. One scene in particular, between Edward's objectionable wife and the timid factory girl, she described as a masterpiece of oblique communication between two completely dissimilar women - one of whom wants Edward, and one of whom does not.

It is 'life itself which is caught up in the pages of her books'. Rebecca West

Mariana

Monica Dickens' first novel Mariana, published in 1940 and very loosely based on Monica's growing up, is the story of a young English girl's journey towards maturity. We follow Mary's exploits at school in Kensington and on magical holidays with her cousins in the family's old country house in Somerset; her humiliation at drama school; her adventures staying with a French family in Paris and getting engaged to the wrong man. Love affairs and meaningless jobs follow as Mary searches for her place in life and the right man to share it with. Mariana remains a delight to read, gripping and funny and affecting, and a vehicle for Monica's real skill as a writer to emerge for the first time. It is also a historical record of a young girl's upbringing between the wars before teenagers were invented (or at least a girl of a certain class). Reviewers detected that Mary's experiences had been portrayed by someone to whom the joys of youth and the agonies of adolescence were still close, and praised Monica's vivid depiction of an ordinary girl stumbling in and out of unsatisfactory love affairs and trying to find herself. With Mariana the world suddenly woke up to what a talented author was now on stage, not merely witty and observant but truly gifted.

'...a gusto in character creation and an ability to limn a physical portrait in an effective stroke or two that speak, in no uncertain terms, of inherited tendency'. New York Times

Man Overboard

Ben, a young Commander in the British navy, has been dismissed from service after the war and needs to find work to support himself and his likeable young daughter. He takes a series of lowly jobs to survive, eventually disentangling himself from an affair with a beautiful but frigid TV actress who loses interest when Ben can no longer provide her with security and respectability. All the while Ben yearns after other possible lives - fascinated by houses glimpsed from a train, basement kitchens, shadows moving behind a blind, and lighted front rooms seen from a street at dusk. When he suddenly alights from a train determined to get to know a family (and the woman) he has idealised from the train window, he discovers they are very different from the contented group of his imaginings...

‘Intelligent and lively..’. Illustrated London News

No More Meadows

The title comes from the dismal Robert Louis Stevenson quote about marriage - that 'Times are changed with him who marries; there are no more bypath-meadows, where you may innocently linger, but the road lies long and straight and dusty to the grave.' Christine, an English innocent in her thirties, meets a humourless American naval officer stationed in England just after WWII who embarrasses her by wearing all the wrong clothes, but she agrees to marry him when her life appears suddenly empty. She sails to her wedding alone on an ocean liner and is married the day after her arrival in America, still doubtful of the future. She starts to feel love and desire for Vinson during their honeymoon and becomes more hopeful, but life in post-war America is lonely and difficult. She is is bored at home all day and resistant to the social duties required of a US naval officer's wife. When she and Vinson run into trouble with their marriage, things start to unravel. Can this transatlantic union succeed?

A 'highly entertaining and amusing study of Anglo-American relationships'... Melbourne Age

Dear Doctor Lily

Two English women, Lily and Ida, meet on a flight to the US where both are due to get married. Ida's marriage runs into trouble, while Lily's is ecstatically happy. But Lily has always felt a deep concern for the unhappy people she encounters – a suicidal girl, a man whose son has died in a fire – and because of this impulse to help, is given the ironic nickname of 'Doctor Lily' by her new friend Ida. Lily becomes deeply committed to working for a suicide-prevention organisation, and the stability of her marriage is gradually eroded as she begins to neglect her husband and daughters....

‘Warm, generous and effortlessly readable.’ Evening Standard

One Pair of Feet

As the effects of the war raging in Europe began to be felt in London, Monica Dickens decided to do her bit by training to be a nurse. Monica is again the error-prone novice, getting in the way and giving out the wrong supper trays as she encounters her fellow probationers, the frigid Matron, the know-all senior nurses who cannot be bothered to instruct her, the comical or touching patients, and not least a number of selfless and dedicated nurses who devote themselves heart and soul to saving lives.

'Brilliantly funny', said the celebrated novelist Elizabeth Bowen of Monica's second memoir. 'Her character sketches of sisters, nurses, public-ward patients, the grandees of the town are little masterpieces.' Reviewers and readers loved it but nursing journals were outraged, mainly because Monica had dared to be funny about their profession. Monica's hospital was horrified, dismissing her book as lies and forbidding their nurses to read it. In later life Monica defended the book as neither lies nor subversive but the truth, with a few changes to avoid libel or hurting people. One Pair of Feet has been called the single most influential portrayal of nursing in the 1940s and '50s, and is thought to have contributed to reform of the profession. It remains a hugely funny read into the bargain.

‘One Pair of Feet is not just a spirited and entertaining account of the training of a hospital nurse in wartime but a fascinating glimpse into a time and a culture so recent and yet so utterly changed.’ Marina Lewycka.

Closed at Dusk

The Sanctuary, the eighteenth-century country home of the likeable Taylor family, is open to the public. Then helpful and personable Jo comes to work at the tea room. As she insinuates herself into the good graces of the family the peace of the house and gardens is rocked by a series of incidents, including a tragic death in a fire and the loss of a beloved pet. Is Jo behind it all? Fear and suspicion grip the Taylors as the mystery plays out.

'Creepy...a story of love, hate and murder, tinged with the supernatural' Sunday Express

The Angel in the Corner

Fledgling journalist Virginia falls for the wrong man and marries him to avoid being carted off to the US with her selfish mother, who has snared a rich American. The marriage to Virginia's layabout husband, Joe, quickly descends into brutality when he orders her to give up her beloved job on a magazine:

Virginia smiled. 'I'll do what I like.' The smile disappeared under his hand as her head jerked backwards and she stumbled to the floor. It was the first time he had ever hit her. Even as his hand touched her mouth, he had the terrible feeling that now that he had done it once, it would be more easy to do it again.

Virginia maintains her struggle to keep her marriage alive in increasingly difficult circumstances, sustained by her vision of an angel in the corner watching over her. But this tale of violence is full of dread, and obviously heading towards disaster...

'Bursting with high spirits, warm-hearted... extremely vivid' The Spectator

The Listeners

A novel about both the Samaritans and their unhappy callers, based on Monica Dickens' own experience as a volunteer. Young wife Sarah, a 1960s figure in mini-skirt and coloured tights, learns how to be a Samaritan and to have a more honest relationship with her husband; lesbian Billie, drinking to ease the pain of her relationship with a callous girlfriend, finds real friendship when she calls the line; longtime Samaritan volunteer Paul falls in love but is too compassionate to leave his alcoholic wife; potential suicide Tim, damaged and alienated after a childhood in care, recovers some equilibrium through Paul's befriending. The reader begins to suspect that one or more of these desperate callers might end by committing suicide, and it is a testament to Monica's skill as a writer that which one or how many remains entirely unforeseeable.

‘...of a higher order than anything Monica Dickens has done previously, engrossing and touching...’ Illustrated London News

One of the Family

The story of a charmer who insinuates himself into a happy London home (not dissimilar to Monica Dickens' own as a child); running parallel is a subplot based on the 1907 real-life murder of department store owner William Whiteley, fact and fiction skilfully intertwined.

The storyline focuses on the Morleys' increasing fondness for herbalist practitioner Toby as he worms his way into their circle, with some interesting sidetracks into the rise of feminism and the plight of the unmarried mother in the Edwardian era. The twists and turns as the novel progresses make it difficult to get a handle on the beguiling Toby, who is never clearly a villain, but might be. Through his negligence a tragic event occurs in the family...

Gripping.

The Winds of Heaven

Left without home or income by the death of her callous husband, lonely middle-aged Louise is forced to live several months of the year with each of her three daughters in turn, and then spend the winter at a friend's hotel. She feels her dependence and uselessness and is indeed a dithery, useless sort of person, often irritating to the reader for not standing up for herself more or trying to find a job to regain some independence. Even so, you are always on her side, if at the same time just as much on the side of the daughters.

Through a chance encounter during tea in a cafeteria, Louise meets a sweet and gentle man who surprisingly turns out to be a writer of lurid thrillers. A bond very slowly develops but the novel is at heart the story of a mother's relationship with her daughters and what dependence can do to a person's spirit.

Poet John Betjeman wrote in the Daily Telegraph that Monica was 'one of the most affectionate and humorous observers of the English scene, particularly of the pretensions of genteel suburban life, that we have. Not only this, but she can always tell a good story, touch the heart with a pleasant sentimental grace… I think The Winds of Heaven is her best novel yet.'

The Room Upstairs

Eighty-year-old Sybil lives alone in a historical old house in New England; when she falls and goes into hospital, she needs support in the house on returning. Her lawyer grandson Laurie and his new English wife Jess do what they can to help. They engage a carer, the overbearing and dyed-haired Dorothy, who begins to take what might be a sinister interest in some of the toxic herbs growing in the garden. Is Dorothy intent on murdering her vulnerable charge? The story is told from the point of view of both the increasingly confused and fearful Sybil and the much younger Jess, who is disturbed by what she thinks are apparitions in the house and an atmosphere there which causes trouble between herself and husband Laurie.

A page-turner, though simultaneously about other things: old age and youth, appearance and reality, time gone by and the noise of modern life. Virginia Ironside in the Daily Mail described the novel as tremendously funny, in an agonising way, 'and so perceptive you are left half-laughing, half-shuddering with the astuteness of Miss Dickens' observation...not a single sentence that doesn't prick its point right home'.

‘Loneliness, claustrophobia and the fantasies of old age were all summoned up and left lingering in the memory’ Daily Telegraph

The Happy Prisoner

Floppy-haired Oliver is an ex-officer who has injured his heart and lost a leg in WWII, and is now confined to bed in his family home to recuperate. Although occasionally depressed, he has the comfort and interest of the frequent visitors to his room: his scatty American mother, an efficient but cool young nurse, his awkward, big-boned sister, another sister dreading the return of her husband from the war, and a charming ten-year-old girl cousin who is mad about horses. As he observes the tribulations of his friends and family, Ollie begins to think that he can solve everyone's problems and meddles disastrously. The story has romance and pathos but maybe a happy ending for Ollie, with whom no reader has ever failed to fall in love.

Monica Dickens is unfailingly entertaining, with a sharp eye for the amusing trifle and a 'genius for the humours of the commonplace'. Pamela Hansford Johnson

Follyfoot

(For children and young adults)

Follyfoot Farm is a retirement home for old or unwanted horses, often rescued from a cruel fate or cruel owners. It's run by the Colonel, helped by his stepdaughter Callie and stable-hands Dora and Steve, who all work hard - but have plenty of adventures as they care for the animals. Follyfoot, based on Monica Dickens' novel Cobbler's Dream, became famous as the much loved 1970s TV series of the same name. It was sold to twenty countries around the world and the theme tune, The Lightning Tree by the Settlers, steadily climbed the charts.

‘A pony lover’s dream - this heart-warming story stands the test of time brilliantly.’ Julia Eccleshare, Lovereading4kids