Marina Maxwell
  • Home
  • MMMusings
  • Blogs
  • About Me
  • My Books
  • Book Reviews
  • FAMILY TALES

Reviews

Categories

All


I read and review both historical fiction and non-fiction, but also enjoy biographies, crime and some contemporary fiction.
​ 

Please note that unless stated that I have received these books directly from the publisher or author in exchange for an honest review, I either purchase my own copies or source them from my local library service. 

​Links to Amazon, Book Depository or Dymocks Australia are only for the reader's reference.
(Due to some poor experiences recently with Booktopia, from 2023 I will no longer link to them.)

My reviews for Historical Novels Review, the magazine of the Historical Novel Society, can be found online here
​

Marriages Are Made in Bond Street

15/8/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture
Long before people went searching for their soulmates on the Internet, there were discreet businesses where, for a fee, you would be put in touch with your ideal match as potential wife or husband. London’s first such marriage bureau was founded by two friends, Heather Jenner and Mary Oliver, just months prior to the outbreak of World War II.
 
Written by Penrose Halson, a subsequent owner of the business, and based on Jenner’s personal archives, this tells the story of the Bureau’s early clients and also how it struggled initially for acceptance when society still had fixed ideas about how one went about finding a suitable partner, never mind the suspicions that two attractive young women in business might be up to something immoral.
 
Although marketed as non-fiction, it’s pretty obvious the truth has been greatly embroidered with fiction in the same voice throughout. It has all the “carry-on regardless” attitude that prevailed during war-time London and in places almost borders on a Brian Rix farce, with clients such as a dodgy Arabian “sheik”- or is he really Welsh? - and a man who wants a wife with only one leg. These, and many other peculiar and occasionally hilarious demands of the clients and notes by the interviewers, fill several pages of appendices at the end of the book.
 
A few working-class types did venture into the elite preserve of Bond Street in an effort to find partners, but on the whole there is a preponderance of certain types from the upper middle classes, retired brigadiers and daughters of peers, gay (in the old-fashioned sense) divorcees, trembling virgins, bumbling chaps from the colonies, twerps called Cedric and frumpy spinsters called Myrtle. Some of the owners and secretaries who worked at the bureau were quirky as well and apparently there really was a woman called Picot Schooling. The loneliness, desperation and tragedies at the heart of some of these personal lives are glossed over and the result is lightweight rather than insightful or philosophical.
 
If you love all those rather twee British TV series such as “Call the Midwife”, “Father Brown” or “Home Fires” then this book is definitely for you. Must admit I did enjoy its nostalgia and look forward to another wallow when the Bond Street Bureau comes to our screens - as it surely must!
 
Perhaps not quite four toodle pips, but a jolly spiffing three.

Note: This book has the more pragmatic title of The Marriage Bureau in the US, I guess with the assumption Americans are unaware of the prestige of a Bond Street address.


Booktopia

Amazon.co.uk

​Amazon.com

Picture
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Categories

    All

    Archives

    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    October 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    October 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    December 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015

    See
    Historical Novel Society
    ​
    for my reviews of historical fiction
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Home
  • MMMusings
  • Blogs
  • About Me
  • My Books
  • Book Reviews
  • FAMILY TALES