Ysenda Maxtone GrahamRecensioni

World War 2

Not as charmingly jaw-dropping as Terms and Conditions, but still a delightful nostalgia trip through the awfulness/glory of the British summer holiday. Which barely overlapped at all with my NZ summer memories of swimming in rivers, living in a pup tent, and exploring beaches and bush; how lucky we were.

Enthralling account of life at a girls' boarding school, a foreign subject to me but one which will wash some readers away in waves of aching nostalgia/trauma. The author has interviewed numerous Old Girls and Very Old Girls, most a bit posh, and has a delicious way with deadpan anecdote and spinning atmosphere and narrative out of multiple voices. Also it's frequently hilarious. I wanted to buy about 20 copies and give one to all the funny clever women I knew who (boarding school or not) would surely recognise elements of their childhood in its pages.

A wonderful read, written by the granddaughter of the creator of "Mrs. Miniver", who lifted many a spirit with her portraits of daily life in an upper middle class household. As the film version of Mrs. Miniver was rather far removed from the fiction created by Joyce Maxtone Graham (alias Jan Struther), so Joyce's "real life" was very different from that of her light-hearted, happily married heroine. This book is a fascinating portrait of the woman herself. Highly recommended.

I loved it; brief, affectionate, and evocative. The quick alto-relief effect reminded me of Saint-Simon although Maxtone Graham is good natured. One of the few books I've finished and will keep to read again, instead of donating it to the lie-berry.

Also, yay Slightly Foxed!

A really lovely little book looking at/ interviewing female boarding school attendees in the Uk in the 40-70s. It made me nostalgic for the books about boarding schools I’ve read in the past, and made me feel like I’ve missed out on something great. All in all a great read if the topic interests you. The author clearly cares deeply about the subject.

Terms & Conditions: Life in Girls' Boarding Schools, 1939-1979 by Ysenda Maxtone Graham is exactly what I was looking for this week. As the title suggests, this is a non-fiction book about what it was like to attend a boarding school for girls from the years of 1939-79 (in the United Kingdom obviously). The author conducted numerous interviews of women who attended these school who recalled startlingly vivid memories (both ill and pleasant) of their time there. From what it was like to be separated from family at a young age (some incredibly young) to the traumatic recollections of the horrible food they were forced to eat to what really went on when a bunch of hormonal girls were kept sequestered without any boys in sight this is a book that is both informative and interesting. (It's also super funny.) I've read some fanciful stories about what it's like to live in a boarding school but never true accounts from the girls themselves about what actually went on behind those austere facades. (Seriously a ton of them were in manor houses and castles which makes me super jealous.) There are many similarities between the institutions and also some gargantuan differences. For instance, some of the places (Cheltenham for instance) were strict, highly academic, and the girls that left there were more likely to continue into higher education. Others were more practically minded (or obsessed with horses and sports) and the girls that left there were generally encouraged to go to secretarial college and then look for a husband almost immediately after entering the workforce. It's an eye-opening read about what it was like for these upper-crust girls who were sent away by their families and then suppressed by these same people into wanting less for themselves. I highly recommend this not only because it's extremely well-written and researched but also because it's so fascinating comparing it to the way young women of today are educated and their expectations after leaving school. 10/10

"I have read stories about girls' boarding schools and they are nothing like what it is here"
By sally tarbox on 5 March 2017
Format: Hardcover
An utterly absorbing and entertaining book which I read in an afternoon. Using 1979 as her cut-off date - the start of the 'centrally-heated duvet age' - the author focusses on the 'last years of the boarding school Olden Days - the last gasp of the Victorian era, when the comfort and happiness of children were not at the top of the agenda.'

And so we read of dire food, excessive games sessions, chilblains, bullying... The author has interviewed many Old Girls - from convents, from schools with a strong academic ethos and from the many schools of the era whose main remit seems to have been to raise the children with others of good families, education being an unimportant matter.
But this is not a diatribe against boarding schools, as there are many happy memories too. And even the negatives, the author argues, worked to turn out a certain sort of woman, one able to 'grasp the nettle strongly'.

Fascinating read - recommended.

I haven’t seen the film nor have I read the book on which it was based. In October 1939, a collection of articles from the London’s The Times saw the light after two years of publication and faithful following from the newspaper’s readers. Joyce Maxtone Graham, née Joyce Anstruther, alias Jan Struther, was the writer and creator of Mrs Miniver, a very proper and endearing British woman, mother of two sons and daughter, married to a perfect husband. Joyce Maxtone Graham had started early a literary career having contributed short pieces and poems to Punch, among other British publications, and being also the author of inspiring hymns. The newspaper articles, the book collection and then the wildly free adaptation to film received general public attention during the late 30’s and early 40’s in the UK and North America. The MGM film, starring Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon, distributed worldwide, was hugely successful and become an effective propaganda tool for the war effort during the Second World War. Winston Churchill is reported to have said that it did more for the Allied cause than a flotilla of battleships. Jan Struther herself contributed with several tours of acclaimed lectures in the United States to the promotion of the film and, indirectly, to edge the Americans from an isolationist position to participation in the war.

This, let’s say, is what might be called the official, formal story behind both character and her creator. Interesting as it is, it turned out that behind it or perhaps better, alongside it, a lesser known parallel reality, concealed for many years by the writer, evolved with plenty of passion, pain and adventure. Jan Struther’s grand-daughter, Ysenda Maxtone Graham, published in 2001 a book of recollections called The Real Mrs Miniver on the life of her famous grandmother. And the real Mrs Miniver is a fascinating story indeed. Slightly Foxed Ltd has now reissued the book in a limited edition of 2000 copies (No. 21 of the series Slightly Foxed Editions); the book is both a joy to read and handle in its small, hardback format.

I won’t be including any spoilers here. Only a recommendation to read all about the intense Jan Struther (who died as Joyce Placzek). Her grand-daughter does a marvelous job telling a story of love and human character. I have the film on order.

This was not quite what I expected, but a good read all the same, made me want to know more about St Philips school. I was just sorry that some parts of the text were printed in extenso in the Preface (notably the cryptic diary entry), which spoilt the impact as I thought YMG had repeated the same thing twice. I was happy to see a reference to Lampeter University, my own alma mater.