Mollie Panter-Downes

It is a summer's day in 1946. The English village of Wealding is no longer troubled by distant sirens, yet the rustling coils of barbed wire are a reminder that something, some quality of life, has evaporated. Together again after years of separation, Laura and Stephen Marshall and their daughter Victoria are forced to manage without 'those anonymous caps and aprons who lived out of sight and pulled the strings'. Their rambling garden refuses to be tamed, the house seems perceptibly to crumble. But alone on a hillside, as evening falls, Laura comes to see what it would have meant if the war had been lost, and looks to the future with a new hope and optimism. First published in 1947, this subtle, finely wrought novel presents a memorable portrait of the aftermath of war, its effect upon a marriage, charting, too, a gradual but significant change in the nature of English middle-class life.

One Fine Day

Good Evening, Mrs.Craven

Originally published in The New Yorker, Mollie Panter-Downes was the voice of England during the Second World War.

The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes

Good Evening, Mrs. Craven

London War Notes

Contains ten stories describing aspects of British life in the years after the war.

The Peacetime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes

Minnie's Room

London War Notes, 1939-1945

Gregory Lestage

Until now, Mollie Panter-Downes's stories, originally published in The New Yorker, have been unavailable in English. They explore most aspects of British life during WWII in great detail.

Good Evening Mrs. Craven

Nevis Falconer, a young, sophisticated novelist, meets and marries Simon Quinn. She comes to realise that her passionate marriage is stifling her creative talent, and finds herself increasingly distracted and disillusioned with her writing. Then one day in London she meets Marcus Chard, her American publisher, and everything changes.

Mollie Panter-Downes

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