This is a really interesting read. How Phyllis ended up in Prison and how she was treated afterwards is an intriguing story. It is a part of history that I knew a little about. From a historical point of view it is well put together and obviously well researched.

Thank you to Netgalley for my copy.

At the outset I have to say that this is a well written novel which deals with the rise of fascism in England just before the outbreak of the Second World War. In some ways it does not make for comfortable reading with its cast of middle/upper class characters who care very little about anything outside their rather privileged world.

It is the story of three sisters, two of whom are closely involved with the British Union of Fascists whose policies they believe are the future direction for the country. Whilst fascism is at the heart of this novel it is treated rather lightly and isn’t decried to any great extent. It all seems to be about having jolly funny at summer camps and educational meetings.

Historically interesting but rather worrying in its tone.

I received a complimentary copy of the book from NetGalley and publisher in exchange for an honest review. Thank you.

In a nutshell this book is about the rise of the Blackshirts in the years and months leading up to the War. Naive Phyllis returns to England after years away and is quite out of touch with things happening around her. Spending time with her sisters again she gets caught up unawares and with a small slip a mistake her life changes forever. This is a fascinating book - it shows how very easily one's life change be turned upside down in a moment and the insidious creep of fascism and how it overtook even the best of normal people. A must read.

One thing puzzles me about this book. The blurb has a quotation which I think is a little misleading: 'Had it not been for my weakness, someone who is now dead could still be alive. That is what I believed and consequently lived with every day in prison.' To me this implies that the narrator, Phyllis, is in prison because she was in some way complicit in a death. Well she was, but not to the extent this quote implies. The incident referred to is quite a minor one and the novel is much more about how Phyllis comes to be involved with the British Union of Fascists and how she was interred at the beginning of the war for her political involvement with Moseley's party. This is interesting and there are many brilliant observations made. The attitude of Phyllis and her sisters are unedifying and shown in all sorts of small ways. For example when they talk about the restrictions on driving that the transport minister wants to impose it's clear that they want only what's best for them and have no thought for the safety of others. Their views too on the lower classes are vile and prejudiced. It's not easy to warm to Phyllis or her sisters. Interspersed with the narrative is Phyllis' voice talking about these times decades later. I wasn't sure about this. I found it distracted from the narrative and went over things already known. In many ways I think the book would have been better if it had been told in a more straightforward way. The writing is very good though and it does give some insight into those times although I'm still not clear what motivated Phyllis into joining the British Union. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance e-copy.

This is a strange book and I’m not sure I want to recommend it. The book is set in the years leading up to the Second World War and beyond, and revolves around the central characters of three sisters Phyllis, Patricia and Nina of whom Phyllis is the most significant being the narrator. She is also in prison for much of the novel and her crime is being an activist in the British fascist movement led by Sir Oswald Mosley. I think that the premise of the book is that she and husband have come back from a colonial life abroad and are trying to settle back into English upper-middle-class life. Her sister Nina is involved with jolly fitness camps and a movement which appears to be against the onset of war and very British. Phyllis and her husband, Hugh, get drawn into this organisation with her working locally in Sussex and him eventually supporting the central office in London.

The whole impression of the movement is that it is rather fun with camps, meetings and friendly chaps, cadets who are a bit like Boy Scouts and so on, and it is popular with women who are at a slightly loose end. The leader is certainly part of the attraction with his abilities at public speaking and his evident charm. Phyllis clearly likes her involvement and the British Union of Fascists provides some respite from aged parents and social climbing in Sussex.

Then, in May 1940 she finds herself interned, first in Holloway and then in the Isle of Man for membership of a banned organisation. The time spent in Holloway Prison is initially bleak but the good natures of the internees make it less intolerable. The internment on the Isle of Man for the rest of the war including living in a boarding house, no bombing raids and conjugal visits is more than a lot of people at the time would have felt she deserved. She is finally let out, no longer has she quite the same relationship with her sisters but maintains her interest in fascism and her admiration for Mosley.

What is going on here? This seems to be a sanitised version of the rise of the British Union and the role of women within it. Unlike other European fascist groups it is estimated that up to 25% of the membership were women and that begs the question why. I think the traditional answer is that they were drawn to authoritarian men in boots for whom women were women and men were men and certainly Oswald Mosley was a charismatic figure in the book and in other records. It is worth noting that he actually had a very unsavoury record where women were concerned claiming to have had sex with his first wife’s sister and I think her mother or her aunt as well! However, it might be argued, the book is trying to set the record straight and explain how some of these fascist women were not stridently in favour of dictatorship and anti-Semitism but simply trying to find their way in a new world.

What I find hard to stomach is the notion that Phyllis is so innocent. She mentions how she hears about a little trouble in the East End and notes how a few of the speakers blame little cliques of bankers and the occasional Jewish group for the ills of the world. She must be very blinkered! They have a newspaper in the house every day but maybe she doesn’t read it. Other records suggest that some of the women in the British Union were the most fervent anti-Semites chanting offensive slogans at meetings. Even if the truth lies somewhere in between it is hard to buy the notion of Phyllis as so unknowing.

To make this work, the British Union also has to be made to seem fairly innocuous in its policies. That’s hard to believe given the record of its leader’s speeches, the uniforms, the parades and the rhetoric. Certainly, the British public had no time for them and the Union lost every election it contested.

There’s another thing. This is a story about three sisters and so inevitably it compares with the Mitford sisters involvement in fascism and their hero worship of Hitler. They were not ignorant about what was going on and there is little to be said in defence of them. Maybe the book wants to suggest that they were not all bad either.

I’ve got nothing against redressing the balance in history even in fiction, and there has been a lot of interest from feminist writers in the role of women in British fascism as if it can somehow be sometimes defended. I’m not sure it can and I’m not sure about the intellectual honesty of a book like this. In its defence, I should also say that the book is well written and observed with some nice detail.

Is it a cautionary tale for our own times? It could be at a time when the right and fascist tendencies are in the ascendancy across Europe but don’t think it makes that case. In the end, I don’t think I liked Phyllis very much and she clung to her beliefs and attended meetings after the war. I don’t think the level of discussion at those meetings would have been apologetic to Jews and welcoming to immigrants either.

I enjoyed this novel, the third person sections of which really evoked the pre- and early wartime period. Fascinated to find out about the British Union, and how their supporters were treated during the war. Was less convinced by the first person sections of the book which seemed less convincingly written and didn’t seem to fit the woman we see on the other sections of the book.

A book that is not only a story but a history lesson.
Everyone is aware of Oswald Mosley and his black shirts a dark side of 20th century history but not of how people were enticed into his ideology.
A lot of them were women and during World War Two they were placed in prison without a trial because they were seen as a threat to the state.
This is the story of one such women and what a story it is .

I found After The Party really fascinating as it describes a part of history I had no prior knowledge of. It’s a part of history that, as the blurb says, isn’t widely acknowledged and that Britain is perhaps a little embarrassed by. With the benefit of hindsight it is unbelievable to me that there were British people who liked and supported or even sympathised with Hitler is very chilling. The idea of this sends a shiver down my spine to think of the Britain and the world we could have ended up with if everyone had decided to think this way. It doesn’t bear thinking about.

The author does a great job of describing the atmosphere of the time, where everyone was concerned about events transpiring in Europe and very keen to avoid another war as the memory of WW1 was still clear in their minds. The tension and uncertainty is almost palpable at times and may go a little way to describe why politics was something people turned to as they hoped to make a difference.

The historical detail is well researched and it was interesting to learn more about Britain at that time and how life was. The little details about how people lived, entertained and the different, well defined, roles of the sexes were very interesting to read about. These are all part of a bygone era now and it was great to realise how far as a society we had come.

I didn’t particularly warm to any of the characters. The people involved in the party and the sister’s friends aren’t very nice people. Some of the things they get up to in the name of fun turned my stomach and made for uncomfortable reading, particularly an incident involving a pig near the beginning of the book. I did sympathise with Phyllis a little as I’m not sure she really understood what she was getting herself involved in and only joined to keep her sister’s happy and to make some friends.

The book isn’t particularly fast paced, particularly at the beginning but it is very intriguing and if you are interested in this period of history I think you will enjoy this book. From the beginning the reader is aware that something bad happened which Phyllis got sent to jail for but when this was revealed I have to confess I was a little disappointed as I thought it would be a much bigger event. The author does such a great job of building the tension and intrigue leading to the moment that I expected something really awful to have happened. That said I think the event was quite realistic in the way it happened which does add a depth to the story, making it seem more believable.

This is the first book by this author I have read and I will definitely be looking forward to reading more from her in the future.

Huge thanks to Penguin for providing me with a copy of this book via Netgalley.

I did find it fascinating that the events in this story actually happened. Unbelievable that people were actually imprisoned during the war for just having a belief different to the norm. There's nothing wrong with this story, but it just didn't do anything for me. It was a little bit nothingy. Too many characters with too many names.

It’s 1938 and returning to England from abroad, Phyllis gets involved with helping her sister, Nina, organise the summer camp Nina runs as part of her ‘peace work’ for a political movement. For quite a while the identity of the charismatic individual who heads the movement, referred to only as ‘the Leader’, is not revealed, although readers will probably have their suspicions given some of the unpalatable views espoused and the period in which the events take place. What the book does well is reflect the range of views that prevailed at the time. How many people were fearful of the prospect of war not so much because they were advocates of appeasement or supporters of the Nazi regime but because they feared the upheaval of war, remembering only too well the carnage wrought by the First World War.

I really enjoyed the way the book explores the changing dynamics of the relationship between the sisters – Phyllis, Nina and Patricia – and their different characters. Phyllis is the peacemaker of the trio, trying to accommodate other’s wishes. ‘I always wanted to be friends with both my sisters. Perhaps that was the source, really, of all the troubles of my life.’

It has to be said that the social circle the sisters move in, particularly Patricia, is not populated by the nicest of people. It is made up of individuals who don’t really seem to like each other that much but preserve the social niceties whilst attending dinner parties and the like. Gossipy anecdotes, cruel little asides, mockery and petty snobbery seem to be the order of the day. It’s a picture of a section of society, with their cooks, parlour maids and drivers, which despite all the airs and graces seem removed from the everyday lives and experiences of most people. The sort of people who live in houses with a ‘morning room’, such as the house Phyllis’s husband, Hugh, plans to build. ‘In the mornings Phyllis would be able to take her coffee and write her letters there; perhaps they might install a nice little sofa too, where she might like to sew or read.’

The book opens in 1979 as Phyllis recounts her memories of the period just before the Second World War and during the War itself to an unnamed and unidentified individual researching the history of that time. What follow are extensive flashbacks as Phyllis recalls the events of that time, both public and private. Some of what she recalls, especially the circumstances of her imprisonment, was certainly new to me and rather an eye-opener. These sections of the book have a real feeling of authenticity, albeit the events described are slightly bizarre at times.

The author is a skilful writer; I especially liked the imaginative descriptions and quirky similes. A few of my favourites:
‘Nina’s house stood a little way along from the garage, set back from the road politely, like someone waiting to be introduced.’
‘The tide was out and little boats lolled on their sides in their sandy mud, like the tongues of overheated dogs.’
‘There were blackberries plumping in the hedgerows now and buddleia, giving off a faint scent like pencil sharpenings.’

Although there were elements of After the Party I very much enjoyed, overall I was left with a slight sense of disappointment, the feeling that the book was less than the sum of its parts. For example, the ‘moment of weakness’ referred to in the blurb seems a minor misdemeanour on Phyllis’s part and one in which she is not really the most guilty party or responsible for what follows. Yet it seems to weigh on her conscience for the rest of her life so much so that she treats her draconian imprisonment as justified punishment. Later Phyllis experiences what she views as a ‘betrayal’ but which did not really to amount to anything like that, it seemed to me. I learned a lot from reading After the Party but wanted to feel more enthusiastic about the story than I did.

This beautifully written evocative book opens in 1979 with a first person narrative by Phyllis who begins " When I came out of prison my hair was white. I think it was a shock for them all, but for the children especially." Following this opening chapter which ends with her admitting to her possible culpability regarding a death we are transported back to Sussex in June 1938 where a third person narration focusing on Phyllis begins. Returning to England after a period abroad with her husband and children Phyllis is reunited with her two sisters Patricia and Nina. This is the world of the pre-war upper middle class "country set" where social status and snobbery prevail. Soon we learn that Nina is involved in some kind of political work that involves endless committees and the organising of a summer camp and soon Phyllis somewhat naively becomes involved.

Pre-war British fascism is indelibly linked in the mind with the rabble rousing and street confrontations that occurred on the mean streets of the East End of London but it also had its adherents and apologists across a wide strata of society including the upper classes. This was linked with a desire to avoid another war and this theme was explored in "The Remains of the Day" by Kazuo Ishiguro. This is not only a book about the political and social order of the time but also about relationships and how betrayal can take many forms. The writing expertly conveys the language and attitudes of the period and it is clear that a great deal of research must have been undertaken. To be honest there are not many (if any) sympathetic characters on display here and although there were times when one could be somewhat generous in spirit towards Phyllis especially in view of her later hardship this was always tempered due to her totally unacceptable political views. Indeed she remained quite unrepentant and would subsequently meet up with her former colleagues for reunions housed in East End public houses.

I once read "A Life of Contrasts" the autobiography by Diana Mosley which is facile to put it politely but again shows how apt Hannah Arendt's phrase "the banality of evil" is. I certainly enjoyed this book and Cressida Connolly is to be congratulated on throwing light on a somewhat forgotten period in our not too distant past.

Cressida Connolly wrote one of my favourite non-fiction books: the 2004 The Rare and the Beautiful, the story of the notorious and beautiful Garman sisters, who cut a swathe through literary and artistic circles in Great Britain in the first two-thirds of the 20th Century. Connolly told their story in a memorable and enchanting and ultimately melancholy way: rarely has a biography affected me so much.

So naturally I wanted to read her novel: and I was glad I knew nothing about it (her name alone had made me ask for a review copy). There is a feature of it that is widely disseminated in the publicity, it is no secret or spoiler, but I liked coming upon it for myself. When young(ish) married sisters and their husbands get involved in a political movement in England in the 1930s, my first guess would be that they were socialists or communists. But I realized very quickly (the name Cimmie….) that here it is Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts, and the British Union of Fascists.

It’s a brave move for an author to make. At first glance the book must seem as though it falls into a different genre: rich families, three sisters, secrets, something that wrenches them apart, the looming knowledge of WW2, a big party that is going to end in something bad. But the specifics in this book are very much not what you might be expecting, and the political content is harsh and dark.

Anyone well-read in the general area will recognize much of what is going on: the strong plot is linked in with the politics and the gossip of the time. On the blog before now I have often featured the Mitford sisters, and Diana Mitford, who married Oswald Mosley, has had her own blogposts.

The book is framed by an older woman, one of the key characters, remembering what happened in the past, and making it clear that she was in prison, and the she did a terrible wrong. It is possible that the different strands of the story don’t mesh perfectly, and some of the motivations for certain actions didn’t seem strong enough, but I very much admire Connolly’s efforts here: she is trying to understand what made so many perfectly nice people become part of the British Union of Fascists, and she also makes it clear how random and unfair the results could be, and how important, as ever, class and knowing the right people was. And she does make some things clear:
When war was declared, there was surge of women members; many of the new recruits were wives and mothers who didn’t want to see another generation of their young men slaughtered in Europe.
Not so incomprehensible after all…

But still. I said about Diana Mitford Mosley:

Her politics were detestable and deluded. There is a way in which she doesn’t add up… She was simultaneously quite transparent and quite incomprehensible – those who knew her say she had great personal warmth and charm, but some of us (without the advantage of knowing her personally) wonder about the ice in her heart.

And that applies to the characters in this book, too. There is always much discussion about likeability and relatability in characters, and tbh there isn’t much of that here. And Connolly is very good on the annoyingness of the oldest sister, Patricia, the way she can’t resist a certain kind of dig at her siblings.

The book is beautifully-written. I loved Phyllis’s wariness about the house being built by her husband:
Phyllis felt a stab of envy that the children would not have to be rooted for ever within this constructed idea of his, but would over time be able to flit in when the weather was fair and then away as it suited them. Like swallows or bats. Growing up would bring freedom to [them], but in her own life the reverse had been the case.
The conversations about politics, marvellously, manage to be witty, AND convincing, AND interesting:
‘I can’t see why anyone would want a war, whatever background they came from. Or religion, or whatever they are. And even if they did, Worthing hardly seems the place to stop them.’
When one young woman takes up with an unsuitable young man and has an illicit and disastrous evening, her aunt says:
‘Oh dear. I’m sure this wouldn’t have happened if Phyllis had only got her a pony.’
The book is full of references to other books about, set in, or written about the 1930s: with a particularly magical moment when the hotel dining-room in Paris seems to be full of the cast of a certain Agatha Christie book, lightly sketched in…

For contrast, Angela Thirkell’s Summer Half, published in 1937, and dealing with a similar milieu, had this to say about Blackshirts:

‘It was a man selling little books. One of those blackshirt fellows you know, like Puss in Boots in a polo jersey.’…

‘I’ll tell you another funny thing about those blackshirts,’ said Lydia. ‘No one knows who they are, or where they go. I mean, have you ever seen one, except standing on the pavement in waders, looking a bit seedy? You meet quite a lot of Communists and things in people’s houses… but you never go to tea with someone and find them sitting there in their boots.’

(You can see why I thought this book was going to be about Communists, given my previous reading. First time anyone has thought of Angela Thirkell as favouring socialism.)

In this blogpost (again, on Diana Mitford Mosley) I look at the ins and outs of detaining people in wartime without trial.

Worrying about Diana Mosley – with her account at Harrods – isn’t rising to the top of anyone’s list. And the question is this: what did she think was happening to people in her situation in Germany?







The ball has a white theme. I don’t think a white horse appeared, but the top photo (from Kristine’s photostream) seemed to give a good idea of white clothes for the 1930s. The clothes did not have to be entirely white, and the strikingly assymetric dress (same source) seemed very suitable.

The dress with a wrap – from 1930s Vogue – comes from the Clover Vintage Tumblr.

Ostrich fans plainly have an interesting history: it is far easier to find a risqué picture of someone with one than a straightforward image… The picture here is of Norma Shearer some years earlier (but then it is an old fan in the book… )

The final photo shows Oswald Mosley and the blackshirts.

Without rewriting the blurb, the book is initially set in the period leading up to the Second World War and relates to the main character of Phyllis and her upper-class family and their various links and affiliations to the British Union of Fascists and Oswald Mosely. I have to say that that is a frequently ignored area of British history and an under-explored topic in fiction and so I was very taken with the idea of this book. My assumption was that it may have been along the lines of McEwan’s ‘Atonement’ – similar family, similar period, a major event at its heart but while it may have similarities it is a very different book. Although the writing is good and much is made of evocation through sights or sounds or memories which brings a realness and honesty to the book, the story itself is a little plodding and for all the events that occur, it is strangely without any real drama.

An example of this is that the ‘major incident’ is really not that shocking. And although the ultimate outworking of this incident may indeed be tragic the link between these two events is far from defined. Certainly in the mind of the character cause and effect is uncertain and I wonder if this was possibly not so clear in the mind of the author also; the rendering the central event and its outcome does not have a believable feel. It almost appears that the author needed the novel to centre on a shocking event but unfortunately could not define an event shocking enough to carry the weight of the story. Ultimately the book alludes to the event but the reveal comes as a bit of an anti-climax. This part of the book has very little bearing on the arc of the story and seems unnecessary rather than being what should have been the crux of the novel.

To be honest the author’s comment and thoughts portrayed of the British Union of Fascists is not clear either. Very little negative observation is made or presented against the group by any character and even in the parts of the book set forty years later, little reconsidering of the party or its aims is done by Phyllis. If anything, we come away from the book having spent most of the time being pushed towards sympathizing with those caught up in the British Union of Fascists, either due to the conditions the characters find themselves in or the abuse they take from other characters, and I’m not particularly comfortable with that.

I had to say somewhere in my review that After the Party is a brilliant title for this book as it can be read in two distinct ways, both specific to the story and both equally relating to two central elements of the story. However, the novel itself is for me neither in depth nor balanced enough to satisfy historically but it is brave and unusual to take on a subject such as this. And to be fair, I did enjoy much of the book and the writing throughout, it just doesn’t have the heft or vitality in the story that I was expecting or that I felt was required.

Copy supplied by NetGalley.

This novel is firmly rooted in an upper middle class setting, with privileged, entitled people. Both in the thirties and now, this life is so far removed from most of us that I felt it was difficult to engage with any of the characters. I know the whole point is that they live in a different world, but that also makes it difficult to connect with them, or care too much what happens to them.
I'm sorry, but this one is not for me.
Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the ARC.

Phyllis returns from many years abroad to England, just before the outbreak of the Second World War. She and her family settle near her sisters, Patricia and Nina. At first I thought this was a tale of English middle class life around this time, but a surprise was in store. Patricia was rather a social climber, whilst Nina and her husband were somewhat idealistic, and Phyllis was not at all sure where she fitted in. Mainly to keep her children entertained she started helping Nina at the summer camps she ran. This seemed like a harmless pastime and the children quickly became absorbed and made new friends. These camps however were to spread the beliefs of Oswald Mosley, later labelled as fascism. It was to have long term repercussions for the family, especially Phylis and her husband. I found this a fascinating book about a facet of pre war English life which I knew nothing about. A very interesting and entertaining read.

this was simultaneously engaging and tough to read .. the sisters have nearly the same name, so I kept having to check who was who, and then first person also shifted between them .. the underlying historical dilemma intrigued me and it's also important. The pater familias, Hugo, doesn't seem attractive enough to me to warrant amorous difficulties , but I got the idea .. maybe it's because his ideas and his wife's as Mozley supporters of the time turned me off. So it was an awkward though-provoking read for me .. ambitious!

This beautifully written book about an upper class English family getting involved with fascism in the 1930s was almost too subtle, verging on apologetic, as only the section of the book written by Phyllis in 1979 gives any sense of the reality of the politics. Phyllis is an unreliable narrator, concerned about her children but passive to a fault. Is she as naive as she would have us believe about the racism within the party? Yes, it seemed fairly arbitrary that she was interned but it was hard to care about her or her sisters. The 1979 passages give a sense of Phyllis as unapologetic and still in awe of Moseley which is interesting when compared to the third person narrative, but I missed another perspective on the political situation, I was longing to hear another voice.

After The Party is one for fans of Elizabeth Jane Howard. A very British family saga that examines how the upper class were enthralled by Fascism just as war with Hitler's Germany was about to break out. Unlikeable characters but interesting nevertheless.. Thanks to Netgalley and Viking for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Good Grief, where to start with this book ! totally unexpected and not particularly my usual fare however I thought I would have a go. It starts off The Camomile Lawn meets The Famous Five with a frightfully middle class family coming back together in the run up to WWII. It develops into a gripping account of the early war years, the British Fascist movement and how politics can rip lives apart.

I knew a little, but not much, of the history of this period and the internments on the Isle of Man, although I confess I thought it was really just the Italians. Living in Scotland we knew many Italian families who were interned. The truly ghastly piece of this book is the person who led our "heroine" to be arrested in the first place, all explained with that awfully stiff upper lip.

A fascinating glimpse into a long forgotten world and a jolly good read. I am so happy that I decided to go "off piste" and read this novel. I am grateful to the publishers (Viking) and to Netgalley for allowing me the opportunity to read and review.

This book really surprised me - I don’t think I’d read the blurb properly but it was about so much more than I expected. Well written, with an interesting host of characters, giving new voice to a usually unheard section of society in the lead up to World War Two. I’d have loved to have given it more than 3 stars - but the random swapping between third and first person ruined it for me. An unnecessary addition which interrupted the flow.