Maurice Green is a book wholesaler; conscientious and hardworking. He has a reputation to uphold. Bernard Green is his brother; sleazy and disreputable, his part of the business takes in the ‘Leicester Square run’ selling backhand copies of D H Lawrence and ‘photographic art’ to places in Soho.
After an ‘inadvertent’ (in Bernard’s case very advertent) outing to an illicit speakeasy, the pair meet Bunty and Betty, the former a blonde bombshell, ‘a creamy French sponge smelling of Turkish Delight’ who also happens to be deaf and dumb, the latter a young housewife so naïve about what goes on at a ‘dance club’ that Maurice ends up giving her a job out of pity. Tim is Bunty’s husband. Short, stumpy and surly, Tim works for the Waterboard and pretends to have no idea about Bunty’s outings with men in smart cars and tailor-made suits. Jimmy answered an ad that read ‘Smart Boy Wanted’ and now works at Green’s, collecting and delivering books from the publishing houses on Paternoster Row and Warwick Square, all in the shadow of St Paul’s and all doomed…
These characters and many more are thrown together into a riotous wartime tale of prostitution, romance, murder and the good old-fashioned selling of books.
Bless ’em All Wonderful. Allen Saddler has pulled off a coup. A fascinating, fictionalised social history of lust and loss, murder and bathos in shell-shocked London at the start of World War Two. Poignancy, humour and a sense of personal recollection fill every page.
Alexander Masters, author Stuart: A Life Backwards
