Book review | Angela Thirkell: A Writer's Life
By Anne Hall
When I hear about a once-popular and prolific author who first of all fell out of fashion and is then ‘rediscovered’ and republished, I sit up and take note. Because it sends a message that in the face of changing times and the latest over-hyped bestsellers there is something about their work which still works its magic on readers, and I want to know more.
Angela Thirkell is one such example. Referred to dismissively fifteen years ago by Observer writer and critic Robert McCrum with the words, ‘Who reads Angela Thirkell now?’, Thirkell’s popular novels — comic depictions of mid-20th century upper-class lives, with titles such as High Rising, Wild Strawberries, The Brandons, and Cheerfulness Breaks In — are now republished in the eye-catching Virago Modern Classics series, while Anne Hall’s newly published Angela Thirkell: A Writer’s Life (Unicorn) fills in the story behind Thirkell's acerbic wit.
Angela Thirkell wrote about what she knew. Coming from a well-connected family (daughter of an Oxford Professor of Poetry, granddaughter of Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones, and related to both Kipling and Baldwin), she was the sort of person who lived in houses with names rather than street numbers. Titled and eminent personalities pop up frequently throughout her biography. Her work reflects this privileged background, albeit reflected through a satirical eye, and we get to hear Thirkell's authentic voice by the inclusion of quotes from her letters, conversation, and articles.
Money and breeding didn't guarantee her a smooth and easy life: she was married first at the age of 21 to James Campbell McInnes, a professional singer who was also a heavy drinker, and later openly bisexual. That marriage ended in divorce, and her second marriage to George Thirkell led to separation when she left both him and their home in Australia on the pretext of taking a trip to England, which turned into a permanent split.
Yet her novels are full of high comedy, glorying in the humour and sheer silliness to be found in life, prompting the thought that her way of dealing with life was by laughing at and refusing to take it seriously. Modern-day readers sometimes balk at what they see as her upper-class attitudes, but part of the charm of her books is that they give a telling glimpse into how a talented and amusing woman of her time and class saw the world around her: aristocratic foolishness, villagers' foibles, and middle-class pretension.
Angela Thirkell: A Writer’s Life provides an insightful and colourful portrait of a witty and penetrating woman whose high-spirited gift of comedy lives on for a new generation of readers.
Author: Anne Hall
Imprint: Unicorn Publishing
Published: 15 March 2021
ISBN: 978-1-913491-24-6
