My Summer with Dorothy, with Clare Harvey
14a Long Row, Nottingham, NG1 2DH
This summer, Clare Harvey has been reading all the books by the Nottingham writer Dorothy Whipple.
Born in 1893, Dorothy Whipple had a happy childhood in Blackburn as part of the large family of a local architect. Her close friend George Owen having been killed in the first week of the war, for three years she worked as secretary to Henry Whipple, an educational administrator who was a widower twenty-four years her senior and whom she married in 1917. Their life was mostly spent in Nottingham; here she wrote Young Anne (1927), the first of eight extremely successful novels which include High Wages (1930), Greenbanks (1932), The Priory (1939) and Because of the Lockwoods (1949). Almost all her books were Book Society Choices or Recommendations and two of them, They Knew Mr Knight (1934) and They Were Sisters (1943), were made into films. She also wrote short stories (including The Closed Door and Other Stories and Every Good Deed and Other Stories) and two volumes of memoirs. Someone at a Distance(1953) was her final novel. Returning in her last years to Blackburn, Dorothy Whipple died there in 1966.
Her books have been re-issued as handsome grey paperbacks by Persephone, and her works are stocked by libraries and bookshops.
Clare Harvey – a professional novelist herself – will share her findings with you. A few others around the Nottingham City of Literature project have also been spending their summer with Dorothy, but whether you have read all, one or none of her novels you will be equally welcome.
Clare’s latest book of wartime fiction is The Night Raid
This event is free, refreshments are provided. Please let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk.