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About this talk

Unearth the hidden lives and quiet acts of resilience and rebellion unfolding behind closed doors in 20th-century Britain. London in the mid-20th century is often remembered through grand narratives: the Blitz spirit, post-war reconstruction and the optimism of the 1951 Festival of Britain. But beneath these familiar histories are countless stories that have been lost beneath the mythology of post-war Britain. How did ordinary people carve out lives of love and rebellion in a city shaped by conflict? And what can fiction reveal about the hidden histories that continue to shape London today? Novelists Vikki Heywood and Francis Spufford come together for an evening exploring 20th-century London through their acclaimed novels, Miss Veal and Miss Ham and Nonesuch, respectively. In Heywood’s novel, Miss Dora Ham and Miss Beatrix Veal run a post office in 1951 in rural Buckinghamshire while maintaining a careful facade as respectable spinsters. Their hidden history spans suffragist activism, secret love, and a life together that begins to fracture over one pivotal day. In Spufford’s novel, Iris Hawkins is a young woman working in finance in 1939, who meets a BBC television engineer and is drawn into an otherworldly pursuit where history itself is at stake.

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