The Provincial Lady in Wartime
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Narrated by:
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Georgina Sutton
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By:
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E. M. Delafield
About this listen
The Provincial Lady in Wartime, though the last of the Provincial Lady series, is one of the finest.
No further ‘Diaries’ had appeared since The Provincial Lady in America (published in 1934) when, in 1939, Harold Macmillan, then chairman of Macmillan publishers and a fan, made a personal request to E. M. Delafield for a new book. The onset of the war with Germany was serious, but, he said, Britain, was in need of the entertaining but pertinent observations from the Provincial Lady!
Delafield duly set to work and produced the longest and in a way the most interesting of the ‘Diaries’ without losing its sense of fun, of seemingly casual frivolity.
The Provincial Lady in Wartime covers a short time - from 1 September 1939 (just before the declaration of war on 3 September) to 21 November 1939, when fact again met fiction and E. M. Delafield was really ‘called up’ to work for the Ministry of Information. As a result, the focus in the book was on the ‘Phoney War’ when the country found itself in a fever of preparation without the intense action that was to follow a short time after.
The Provincial Lady finds herself in London, looking for voluntary work to support the war effort, which proves an unexpectedly difficult thing to achieve. Her interactions with a varied host of companions, also caught up in a strange frenzy, reflect so clearly the mood and tension of the time, yet the account is witty, apposite - and so very English, with the stiff upper lip underpinning it all.
This book is both hugely entertaining and a faithful portrait of the months before hostilities began in earnest - as seen, of course, from the quirky eyes and particular milieu of the Provincial Lady, whom we have come to love and admire. Sad, then, that it was to be the last ‘Diary’. However, this recording also contains The Provincial Lady in Russia, the three articles Delafield wrote for Harper’s Magazine in 1937 covering her three-month visit to the USSR. These deft pieces of more personal journalism are again witty, observant and informative, showing how ably Delafield combines a light touch with more serious conclusions.
The three essays are:
- 'The Provincial Lady in Moscow' (Harper's Magazine, January 1937)
- 'They Also Serve: The Provincial Lady in Leningrad' (Harper's Magazine, February 1937)
- 'To Speak My Mind About Russia: The Provincial Lady in Odessa' (Harper's Magazine, March 1937)
As always, Georgina Sutton serves E. M. Delafield so well, with a vivacious yet perfectly placed reading.
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Performance
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Story
In 1928, Rosina Harrison arrived at the illustrious household of the Astor family to take up her new position as personal maid to the infamously temperamental Lady Nancy Astor, who sat in Parliament, entertained royalty, and traveled the world. "She's not a lady as you would understand a lady" was the butler's ominous warning. But what no one expected was that the iron-willed Lady Astor was about to meet her match in the no-nonsense, whip-smart girl from the country.
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AWFUL!! I was very disappointed.
- By The Louligan on 08-12-13
By: Rosina Harrison
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Excellent Women
- By: Barbara Pym
- Narrated by: Jayne Entwistle
- Length: 8 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Mildred Lathbury is a clergyman's daughter and a mild-mannered spinster in 1950s England. She is one of those excellent women - the smart, supportive, repressed women whom men take for granted. As Mildred gets embroiled in the lives of her new neighbors - anthropologist Helena Napier; Helen's handsome, dashing husband, Rocky; and Julian Malory, the vicar next door - the novel presents a series of snapshots of human life as actually, and pluckily, lived.
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Still Waters Run Deep
- By Sara on 04-13-16
By: Barbara Pym
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Cakes and Ale
- By: W. Somerset Maugham
- Narrated by: James Saxon
- Length: 6 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
When Cakes and Ale was first published in 1930 it roused a storm of controversy, since many people imagined they recognised portraits of literary figures now no more. It is the novel for which Maugham wished to be remembered.
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Delightful
- By RueRue on 04-22-16
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The Quest for Queen Mary
- By: James Pope-Hennessy, Hugo Vickers - editor
- Narrated by: Tim Bentinck, Gareth Armstrong
- Length: 9 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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The highly acclaimed unexpurgated notes taken by James Pope-Hennessy for his official biography of Queen Mary, the present Queen's grandmother. Published in full for the first time and edited by much-admired royal biographer Hugo Vickers. When James Pope-Hennessy began his work on Queen Mary's official biography, it opened the door to meetings with royalty, court members and retainers around Europe. The series of candid observations, secrets and indiscretions contained in his notes were to be kept private for 50 years....
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obscure but poor gold
- By Dr. A. on 11-20-18
By: James Pope-Hennessy, and others
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A Handful of Dust
- By: Evelyn Waugh
- Narrated by: Andrew Sachs
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Evelyn Waugh's 1934 novel is a bitingly funny vision of aristocratic decadence in England between the wars. It tells the story of Tony Last, who, to the irritation of his wife, is inordinately obsessed with his Victorian Gothic country house and life. When Lady Brenda Last embarks on an affair with the worthless John Beaver out of boredom with her husband, she sets in motion a sequence of tragicomic disasters that reveal Waugh at his most scathing.
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Slow Start then Subtle
- By Michael on 05-16-15
By: Evelyn Waugh
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The Enchanted April
- By: Elizabeth von Arnim
- Narrated by: Nadia May
- Length: 8 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
This is a journey of both escape and discovery for four exquisitely different women, a month of bliss and privacy for four weary souls. Their refuge on the Italian Riviera provides the perfect backdrop for a story about the search for spiritual harmony within and without.
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Excellent book, excellent narrator
- By Amazon Customer on 02-26-05
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The Pursuit of Love
- Radlett and Montdore Trilogy Series, Book 1
- By: Nancy Mitford
- Narrated by: Bessie Carter
- Length: 7 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Mitford's most enduringly popular novel, The Pursuit of Love, is a classic comedy about growing up and falling in love among the privileged and eccentric. Mitford modeled her characters on her own famously unconventional family. We are introduced to the Radletts through the eyes of their cousin, Fanny, who stays with them at Alconleigh, their Gloucestershire estate. Uncle Matthew is the blustering patriarch; Aunt Sadie is the vague but doting mother; and the seven Radlett children, despite the delights of their unusual childhood, are recklessly eager to grow up.
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Unlistenable
- By Michael on 10-17-21
By: Nancy Mitford
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Decline and Fall
- By: Evelyn Waugh
- Narrated by: Michael Maloney
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Sent down from Oxford after a wild, drunken party, Paul Pennyfeather is oddly surprised to find himself qualifying for the position of schoolmaster at a boys' private school in Wales. His colleagues are an assortment of misfits, rascals and fools, including Prendy (plagued by doubts) and Captain Grimes, who is always in the soup (or just plain drunk). Then Sports Day arrives, and with it the delectable Margot Beste-Chetwynde, floating on a scented breeze.
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Black Humor, Satire, and the Absurd
- By Gypsi on 06-09-18
By: Evelyn Waugh
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Jeeves & Wooster: The Collected Radio Dramas
- By: P. G. Wodehouse
- Narrated by: full cast, Michael Hordern, Richard Briers
- Length: 17 hrs and 56 mins
- Original Recording
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A rollicking collection of six acclaimed dramatisations of P.G Wodehouse's Jeeves & Wooster novels, starring Michael Hordern and Richard Briers as Jeeves and Wooster. Also featuring Maurice Denham, Paul Eddington, David Jason, John Le Mesurier, Miriam Margolyes, Jonathan Cecil, Liza Goddard and Patrick Cargill.
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tracks out of order
- By Justin Sluyter on 06-02-19
By: P. G. Wodehouse
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Something New
- By: P. G. Wodehouse
- Narrated by: B.J. Harrison
- Length: 8 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Here, we have a glorious ensemble of Woodhousian characters knocking elbows to foreheads in the elegant and grand Blandings Castle. Meet Freddy Threepwood, the vagrant son of doddering old Lord Emsworth of Blandings Castle. Freddy has recently become engaged to Aline Peters, the American heiress of an irascible father. The snag is that Freddy seems to have at one point become enamored of a struggling actress, Joan Valentine, and written some impetuous and imprudent letters to her.
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Same book as Something Fresh
- By customer on 03-07-15
By: P. G. Wodehouse
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Daddy-Long-Legs
- By: Jean Webster
- Narrated by: Kate Forbes
- Length: 4 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Jerusha Abbott is the oldest orphan in the John Grier Home. Every day she helps scrub and dress the younger children - all 97 of them. Soon she will graduate from high school and be on her own. Where will she go, and how will she support herself? When an anonymous wealthy donor decides to send her to college, Jerusha can hardly believe her good fortune. All she must do in return is send him a letter once a month. With all the excitement of college life - classes, parties, new friends, and a special gentleman - Jerusha can hardly stop writing!
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Delightful
- By Greg and Sara Masarik on 04-06-15
By: Jean Webster
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The Girls of Slender Means
- By: Muriel Spark
- Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon
- Length: 3 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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"Long ago in 1945 all the nice people in England were poor, allowing for exceptions." Thus begins Muriel Spark's tragic and rapier-witted portrait of a London ladies' hostel just emerging from the shadow of World War II. Like the May of Teck Club building itself - "three times window shattered since 1940 but never directly hit" - its lady inhabitants do their best to act as if the world were back to normal, practicing elocution and jostling over suitors and a single Schiaparelli gown.
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please please try again
- By Consolation on 03-24-20
By: Muriel Spark
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Servants' Hall
- A Real Life Upstairs, Downstairs Romance
- By: Margaret Powell
- Narrated by: Susan Lyons
- Length: 7 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Margaret Powell's Below Stairs became a sensation among listeners reveling in the luxury and subtle class warfare of Masterpiece Theatre's hit television series Downton Abbey. Now in the sequel Servants' Hall, Powell tells the true story of Rose, the under-parlourmaid to the Wardham Family at Redlands, who took a shocking step: She eloped with the family's only son, Mr. Gerald.
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Memoir of a Bygone Era
- By Michelle N. Lynch on 04-08-15
By: Margaret Powell
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The Diary of a Nobody
- By: George Grossmith
- Narrated by: Geoffrey Palmer
- Length: 4 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Written as the diary of someone who would not normally merit a memoir but considers that he should have one written about him anyway, The Diary of a Nobody chronicles in agonizing but very funny detail everyday life in the lower middle class suburbs of Victorian England and the attempts of a social climber to better himself. It was published in 1892. First published in the satirical magazine Punch as a serial between 1888 and 1889, with illustrations by the author’s brother, Weedon.
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Outstanding performance
- By pandajama on 01-11-20
By: George Grossmith