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We Learnt about Hitler at the Mickey Mouse Club A Childhood on the Eve of War
Enid Elliot Linder
History/Memoir June 2020 9781785786099 | £9.99 9781785786105 (eBook) | £7.99 (eBook) B-format Paperback | 256pp TERRITORY: World TRANSLATION RIGHTS: Icon Books/Marsh Agency
For fans of Call the Midwife, a unique autobiography of a 1930s London childhood. Enid Elliot Linder was the daughter of a butler and a lady’s maid in service in some of England’s grandest country houses. Evoking the lost world of a childhood ‘below stairs’, Linder’s touching memoir describes how her life changed as Britain headed towards war. After the family moved to a Marylebone tenement, her father sought work in London restaurants whilst descending into fatalistic alcoholism. Meanwhile Linder’s aunt was nanny to a high-ranking member of the British Union of Fascists as they grew in influence. In a photorealistic and immensely charming narrative reminiscent of Patrick Hamilton, Linder evokes the sights and smells of prewar London – and of lonely Cornwall, to where she was unhappily evacuated – in a way that will appeal to fans of Call The Midwife or Downton Abbey. It is a unique personal account of a tumultuous time. ENID ELLIOT LINDER, who died in 2007, was an artist specialising in silhouette drawings. She left her memoir to her niece Elaine Cox, a lecturer at Oxford Brookes, who promised to assure its publication. 28