What an interesting post! I find Josephine Tey fascinating. I started my adventure with her with The Daughter of Time and know I will need to reread it more than once. Her writing is layered in ways that I'm constantly surprised by. The Franchise Affair, like The Daughter of Time, was inspired by a story Mackintosh had read -- I believe an 18th- or 19th-century story about a young woman who claimed to have been kidnapped into servitude. I don't know whether the truth of that story was ever established, but the novel, as I read it, goes after tabloid press and the influence it has over popular imagination. Personally, I don't see the prejudice against the poor that many readers see in the story -- I think it's rumor mills, cheap sentimentalism, and the power of sensationalist press that Tey is writing against. I've seen some readers get very upset with Mackintosh for being a Tory. Her political views are certainly interesting in light of her background: she was a daughter of an Inverness shopkeeper who had grown up in desperate poverty. Mackintosh divided her time between London, where she wrote for the theater, and Inverness, where she took care of her widowed father and, I believe, wrote most of her fiction.
I should clarify that it's Mackintosh's father who was desperately poor, not his daughter -- my sentence in the post above leaves that ambiguous. Unless I'm misremembering details from her biography, unlike her father, she did not speak Scots Gaelic, and she identified more strongly with her mother's English family.
I must read Mrs Miniver! The film is a hoot though, but the design is on a completely surreal level - the array of Strawberry Gothic chairs set out for the village gathering, the American style picket fencing - England viewed through the eyes of America, improved where necessary.
Congratulations on your book and thank you for this piece - I must read Mrs Miniver. I do enjoy Josephine Tey. Reading your piece about The Franchise Affair reminded me of Ruth Rendell’s Inspector Wexford; it is one of his favourite books and Rendell worked it into the plot of Harm Done.
What an interesting post! I find Josephine Tey fascinating. I started my adventure with her with The Daughter of Time and know I will need to reread it more than once. Her writing is layered in ways that I'm constantly surprised by. The Franchise Affair, like The Daughter of Time, was inspired by a story Mackintosh had read -- I believe an 18th- or 19th-century story about a young woman who claimed to have been kidnapped into servitude. I don't know whether the truth of that story was ever established, but the novel, as I read it, goes after tabloid press and the influence it has over popular imagination. Personally, I don't see the prejudice against the poor that many readers see in the story -- I think it's rumor mills, cheap sentimentalism, and the power of sensationalist press that Tey is writing against. I've seen some readers get very upset with Mackintosh for being a Tory. Her political views are certainly interesting in light of her background: she was a daughter of an Inverness shopkeeper who had grown up in desperate poverty. Mackintosh divided her time between London, where she wrote for the theater, and Inverness, where she took care of her widowed father and, I believe, wrote most of her fiction.
Now I need to check out Mrs. Miniver!
I should clarify that it's Mackintosh's father who was desperately poor, not his daughter -- my sentence in the post above leaves that ambiguous. Unless I'm misremembering details from her biography, unlike her father, she did not speak Scots Gaelic, and she identified more strongly with her mother's English family.
I must read Mrs Miniver! The film is a hoot though, but the design is on a completely surreal level - the array of Strawberry Gothic chairs set out for the village gathering, the American style picket fencing - England viewed through the eyes of America, improved where necessary.
Thank you. I appreciated this piece. It was a name I’d heard (Mrs Miniver) but knew nothing about.
Congratulations on your book and thank you for this piece - I must read Mrs Miniver. I do enjoy Josephine Tey. Reading your piece about The Franchise Affair reminded me of Ruth Rendell’s Inspector Wexford; it is one of his favourite books and Rendell worked it into the plot of Harm Done.
I was thinking of Ruth Rendell, although I don't know the Wexford books. She would definitely have come up with a better ending to this mystery!
How interesting! All I knew was Greer Garson... that book sounds marvellous.
As is yours Sarah, many bravos to you.
What a wonderfully written piece. Just finished listening as I went for a walk. Brilliant insights into society and Tey too. Thank you.