{"id":4329,"date":"2015-02-09T17:19:05","date_gmt":"2015-02-09T06:19:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/?p=4329"},"modified":"2016-12-16T17:43:02","modified_gmt":"2016-12-16T06:43:02","slug":"book-recommendations-please","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/2015\/02\/book-recommendations-please\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Recommendations, Please"},"content":{"rendered":"

I know the people who regularly visit this blog are widely read, highly intelligent and have excellent taste, so could you please recommend me some books? But not just any<\/em> books. I am looking for some very specific<\/em> books \u2013 namely, books set in England, preferably London, in the 1950s or early 1960s, about middle-class or upper-class schoolgirls. The books can be novels, memoirs, biographies, autobiographies (or chapters of biographies or autobiographies) \u2013 I don’t mind, as long as they centre on the lives of schoolgirls and the author really knows what he (or preferably, she) is writing about. To be even more demanding, I’d prefer to read about girls at day schools, rather than boarding schools. A 1950s or 1960s version of A Long Way From Verona<\/em><\/a> or The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie<\/em><\/a>, set in London, would be perfect<\/em>. <\/p>\n

Here are some of the books I’ve recently read, or re-read, that didn’t quite meet my requirements: <\/p>\n

An Education<\/em><\/a>, a memoir by Lynn Barber, included some chapters describing how Lynn, a bright but na\u00efve schoolgirl, was courted by a much older con man who convinced her (and her parents) that she should leave school and marry him. It was also made into an excellent film<\/a>, written by Nick Hornby and starring Carey Mulligan.<\/p>\n

Girlitude: A Portrait of the 50s and 60s<\/em><\/a>, a memoir by Emma Tennant<\/a>, looked promising, but wasn’t really about her life as a child. It’s about how the author, a spoilt, rich member of the aristocracy, drifted through the fifties and sixties, picking up and discarding husbands, lovers, friends and houses, dumping her child on her long-suffering parents, and occasionally deigning to work for a few months at a time at some fashion magazine or other (the jobs arranged for her by her family, as she’d left school at fifteen and had no qualifications or apparent skills).<\/p>\n

I also read, or re-read, a few Noel Streatfeild children’s books, including the ‘Shoes’ novels (Apple Bough\/Traveling Shoes<\/em><\/a> remains my favourite), Caldicott Place<\/em> (which was okay) and Gemma<\/em> (which was dreadful). Then I read some grown-up novels by Elizabeth Jane Howard, All Change<\/em><\/a> and Love All<\/em>, as well as The Golden Notebook<\/em><\/a> by Doris Lessing, which included schoolgirls as minor characters. <\/p>\n

Any other suggestions, readers? Has anyone read the World’s End<\/em> series by Monica Dickens<\/a> or any of Mary Treadgold<\/a>‘s children’s books, and would you recommend them? My only other proviso is that I’d prefer the books to be readily available. (For example, I’ve been intrigued by reviews of Antonia Forest<\/a>‘s Marlow books for a while, but they’re in copyright yet out-of-print, and the last time I went online looking for a second-hand paperback copy of End of Term<\/em>, it was listed for SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS, which is beyond my book-buying budget.) Thanks, everyone!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I know the people who regularly visit this blog are widely read, highly intelligent and have excellent taste, so could you please recommend me some books? But not just any books. I am looking for some very specific books \u2013 namely, books set in England, preferably London, in the 1950s or early 1960s, about middle-class … Continue reading Book Recommendations, Please<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,6,7],"tags":[74,73,72,54],"class_list":["post-4329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1950s-and-1960s","category-books","category-film-and-tv","tag-elizabeth-jane-howard","tag-emma-tennant","tag-lynn-barber","tag-noel-streatfeild"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4329"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4329\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4335,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4329\/revisions\/4335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}