How to Make a Drama out of a Crisis by Julie Summers

When I set out to write a history of the activities of the Women’s Institute of England and Wales in 2009 I had no inkling that it would lead to a full-blown television drama series. None at all. So you can imagine that it has been a journey of many exciting twists and turns: to create a drama out of the greatest crisis to hit the lives of those living in the middle of the twentieth century.

First things first. I am a historian, not a script-writer, so the suggestion that a village women’s institute might be a potential seed of an idea for a drama came not from me but from the brilliant mind of Home Fires’ creator and writer, Simon Block. He and I met on a course in the beautiful English county of Devon in 2012. Simon was one of two tutors on a TV script writing course. If I am not script writer, what was I doing on this course? It’s a good question and one I asked myself several times during the week. I had written ten books and fancied that writing in a different format or discipline might be a new challenge.

Home Fires © ITV

At the end of the course Simon and I discussed the fact that I did not want to become a script writer but that storytelling was my great passion. I told him about my book on the WI, which I had just submitted to the editor in its final draft, and to my surprise he was very interested. I think even back then he could see the potential for a women-led drama set against the backdrop of the Second World War. He wrote to me earlier this year with his thoughts:

‘Like most people I think, I had no idea of the extent and importance of the role played by the WI during the Second World War. Not only in regard to its activities aimed at supporting the home front but also in terms of the support and friendship it offered to often isolated women who needed the companionship of other women like never before - even if for a few hours a month. The book opened my eyes to the great extent WI women mobilised to make such a huge contribution, generating a fantastic spirit of 'community'.  The fact that this was largely unknown (as is often the case with women's history) left me feeling it was a significant episode in British culture that should be more widely recognised. Plus, it offered a fantastic opportunity to write about a lot of women in their own right, and not merely as adjuncts to - or victims of - various men, which is so often how women are portrayed in television drama.’

 Selling jam in episode 1 of Home Fires © ITV

Simon approached Catherine Oldfield at ITV Studios and we were introduced. Within an hour of meeting Catherine I knew that I could trust her with my work and within four days she and her boss, Francis Hopkinson, had taken out an option on my book, Jambusters (Home Fires in the USA). That meant ITV Studios would be able to work up a first script and submit it to the television networks in due course.  But how to translate historical non-fiction, the voices of real women, and the goings on in the Second World War on the Home Front, into a television drama that would pack a punch but remain true to the history? Francis Hopkinson explained to me that in the normal course of events an author is not involved in drama development. However this appeared to be a slightly unorthodox situation as my book was to be the source for inspiration rather than adaptation. Simon Block describes it as the DNA of the series.

So I was retained as the historical consultant to the scripts, which means that I have had the immense good fortune and delight to have been involved in meetings when story lines were discussed. My role is to produce the history, when required, of both the progress of the war and the situation at any given point in time of the WI. I was able to offer a sense of background for the first series, emphasising the mood in Britain during that strange period called the Phoney War: the country was at war, the British Expeditionary Force was guarding the Maginot Line in France, but nothing was actually happening. It produced a kind of paralysis in the country, which changed into anxious boredom and then the acceptance of the calm before the storm.

Erica Campbell hitches a lift with Steph Farrow,  Home Fires © ITV

All the characterisation was developed by Simon Block and he knows each of the men and women in his drama intimately. In a fascinating three day meeting ‘in conclave’ in April 2014 five of us sat down, with tea, coffee and cakes (WI style), and discussed the back-stories to all the main characters. Nine months later we were back in conclave considering the possible story lines for a second series and that is when I realised they are moving slowly through the war and this next series only takes us up to the end of summer 1940. As my mother’s friend said to me with a grin: ‘Julie, there’s a lot of war left!’

Domestic violence was prevalent in the 1940s Home Fires © ITV

My involvement stops with the scripts. The production is a whole different game and I find it both fascinating and bewildering. When I write a book there are perhaps half a dozen people involved – editor, copy-editor, proof reader, publicist and so on. That is about the same number of people working in the make-up truck on the set of Home Fires. On my first visit to set in September 2014 I was completely overwhelmed by the scale of the enterprise. Watching the filming of series 2 was no less magical, just a great deal more muddy. I have enjoyed the experience enormously but I think I made the right decision to stick to writing and story-telling. I’ll leave television to the professionals.

Home Fires Season 2 starts on ITV on Sunday 3rd April at 9pm and will be seen on PBS later in the year.

Home Fires © ITV

Joyce Grenfell by Janie Hampton

Joyce Grenfell with her cook Rene Easden, 1938

The writer and entertainer Joyce Grenfell was born 106 years ago this month. By the time she retired in 1973, she had performed on four continents, in front of King George VI, Maurice Chevalier and Igor Stravinsky. She always claimed to be ‘just a housewife’ who happened to walk onto a stage. But while researching her biography, I found that her childhood had prepared her for the limelight. Her mother was Virginian-born Nora Langhorne, the youngest sister of Nancy Astor MP, and they both taught Joyce to mimic accents. Her father Paul Phipps, an architect,taught her to observe people, especially on buses. Brought up in Bohemian Chelsea, she went to smart private schools and was presented as a debutante at Court.  A tall girl with huge feet, she was often the wallflower at society balls. At nineteen she married Reggie Grenfell, a shy accountant.

As a young housewife living on the Astors' estate at Cliveden in the 1930s, she ran the local Women's Institute, wrote poetry for Punch and helped to entertain her aunt Nancy's guests. After one lunch, J.L. Garvin, the editor The Observer, engaged her as the paper's first radio critic. This led to meeting the theatre impresario Herbert Farjeon, who asked her to perform her monologue about the W.I.  Much to the fury of the professionals in his ‘Little Revue’, Useful and Acceptable Gifts was an immediate success.

Joyce and her ENSA pianist Viola Tunnard, c. 1945.

The Second World War brought Joyce more opportunities to perform. After a lunchtime concert at the National Gallery in 1942, she met Richard Addinsell, composer of the ‘Warsaw Concerto’. Together they wrote many successful sentimental ballads including I'm Going to See You Today, which caught the public mood. In 1944 Joyce embarked with the pianist Viola Tunnard on two long ENSA tours across North Africa, the Middle East and India. For 11 months they performed three concerts a day in Nissen huts and tented hospitals.

Arriving in Cairo for some leave, she was targeted by Prince Aly Khan - a lover of race-horses, cards and women.  He wooed Joyce with red roses and dancing by moonlit and although I think she fended him off, she felt guilty all her life for feeling tempted. Infidelity became a theme of many of her monologues: the musician's wife in Life Story, for example, and the French lover in Dear Francois.

Back in London Joyce wrote new songs and sketches such as Travel Broadens the Mind and joined Noel Coward in the first post-war revue, Sigh No More.  'Noel was an actor who wanted to be an aristocrat and Joyce was the opposite, an aristocrat who wanted to be an actor,' the actress Judy Campbell told me. 'Both pulled it off rather well.'

In 1943 Joyce tried straight acting but soon realised that she could not act 'sideways' and anyway, she preferred to have an audience to herself. After that she only performed other people's material in films, such as The Belles of St Trinian's and The Yellow Rolls-Royce, but directors had to accept that she would probably not stick to the script. 'This writer has obviously never met a real Duchess,' she proclaimed on the set of The Million Pound Note.

Donald Swann wrote the music for Joyful Noise, a fake Haydn oratorio sung by Joyce as Miss Clissold, Miss Truss and Ivy Trembly from Wembley, 'who sometimes sings in FFF and sometimes ppp' for the revue Penny Plain in 1951.

After live theatre, Joyce's favourite medium was radio. ‘It's a one-to-one medium, and uses the imagination,’ she said. In 1941 she wrote the first ever one-woman radio show, produced by Stephen Potter, the future author of Gamesmanship. Two years later they wrote and presented How to talk to Children for the BBC Home Service. Their astute social satire, mockery of contemporary etiquette and imaginative use of radio pushed forward radio comedy by a decade. From this emerged the exasperated nursery school teacher and  Joyce's most memorable line, 'George, don’t do that'.  The How series ran for 12 years, using, among others, the voices of Celia Johnson and Roy Plomley. In How to Listen (and How not to) Joyce was the first woman to speak on the Third Programme's opening day  in 1946. She played nine different parts including a Mayfair flapper with a wireless-cum-cocktail cabinet fitted with a 'supersonic incessor switch and hypertonic two-way mega-cycle baffles.' Over the next 30 years Joyce wrote more radio material than any other woman in the 20^th century. She also secured the highest fees, rising from 8 guineas in 1939 to 250 guineas in 1963 for The Billy Cotton Band Show.

After the 1954 success of Joyce Grenfell Requests The Pleasure in two provincial tours, the West End and on Broadway, Joyce relied simply on her talented pianist William Blezard and the jewel-coloured costumes designed for her by Victor Stiebel. She combined talent, observation and sheer hard work.  She wrote over a hundred roles for herself, from the Scandinavian visitor at a cocktail party -  'I sink is so nice to say hello and goodbye quick, and to have little sings for eating is so gay', to Shirley's cockney girlfriend, 'You know, Norm’s the one that drives the lorry with the big ears.' Unsuitable, might have been herself – ‘a hat and gloves and pearls type'  singing 'I go jazzy when I hear the beat. I swing and sway in a groovy way'.

Her favourite role was inspired by Sir Alec Douglas-Home's mother-in-law - the wife of an Oxbridge vice- chancellor in Eng. Lit..  A woman with strong values, she apologised for 'the regrettable absence of essential stationary in the visitor's closet.' Joyce’s perfectly-formed short stories contained tiny but revealing slices of people’s lives. Each monologue took anything up to five years to write, yet lasted only two to eight minutes.  ‘I do not improvise, but I do re-create the story every night,’ she said. While 1960s humour was dominated by Beyond the Fringe, the critics said Joyce was too domestic and apolitical. But her shows continued to sell out everywhere from Dover to San Francisco, from Glasgow to Sydney. She made her audience feel that she loved them, as much as they loved her.

Joyce with her friends Benjamin Britten & Peter Pears, 1967.

Her beloved Reggie always encouraged her, while never allowing her to perform anything that was not up to scratch. They both disliked celebrity parties and their hobbies included bird watching and wild flowers. 

Joyce had a strong faith in Christian Science and believed that Goodness was all around, and pain, evil or disease would melt away if ignored. Apart from opening countless fetes, she kept her enormous generosity secret. Young writers such as Clive James and Jeffrey Bernard received clothes and cheques. During the freezing winter of 1962, my widowed mother was taken to hospital and Joyce arrived with steaming casseroles. She would whip a pair of Marigolds out of her crocodile handbag and whisk round the kitchen, as she reminded us to do our homework. It wasn't until she sent us tickets to her show at the Haymarket that I discovered she had an evening job.

Soon after her last live performance at Windsor Castle in 1973, she lost the sight of one eye, but continued to appear on the BBC's Face the Music.  After she died of cancer in November 1979, over 2,000 people attended her memorial service in Westminster Abbey.  As one of those, I had no idea that 20 years later I would be reading her letters and diaries as I researched her biography.

www.janiehampton.co.uk   Books about Joyce Grenfell:

Joyce and Ginnie, the letters of Joyce Grenfell and Virginia Graham, edited by Janie Hampton, Hodder & Stoughton, 1997. Hats Off! Joyce Grenfell's poetry & drawings, edited by Janie Hampton, John Murray, 2001. Joyce Grenfell, the biography, Janie Hampton, John Murray , 2002. My Kind of Magic, a Joyce Grenfell Scrapbook, edited by Janie Hampton, John Murray,  2003. Letters from Aldeburgh by Joyce Grenfell, edited by Janie Hampton, Day Books,  2006.

Hitler and Marigolds by Julie Summers

Edith Jones' diary
May 1945

There is nothing more delicious than discovering a private diary, written moons ago, that was never intended for publication. It has been my great good fortune to find several in the course of my work on the Second World War but the jewel in the crown for me were the diaries of Edith Jones, which form the golden thread through my book about the Women's Institute, Jambusters. When I tell people I have worked on the WI for over six years I get mixed reactions. Some pity, some incredulity that a women's organisation with a reputation for jam and Jerusalem would be of any interest to an author and sometimes, just sometimes, a nod of acknowledgement that this is a great topic. Well, let me reassure you that those in the third category are right.

As this is my first blog for the History Girls I thought I would kick off with the WI. This year is the 100th anniversary of the Women's Institute of England and Wales. Scotland has its own Scottish Rural WI. Born in Llanfairpwll on Anglesey in 1915, it was founded in part to help with food production during the First World War. However, its main aim was, and remains, to educate its membership. The full story of the WI is told in a new book Women's Century: an illustrated history of the Women's Institute by Val Horsler and Ian Denning.

It is a handsome publication that fulfills its promise by charting the 100 years in a gallery of mainly black and white images. Some are hilarious but the majority tell a tale of versatility, determination and good humour. The authors thread the story neatly through the book, focusing on the WI's key activities: education, campaigning and public affairs.

Wartime WI meeting

We all know about the Calendar Girls, and yes, they are there. As is the Queen, a member since 1943. But the more unexpected aspects of the WI's work is also celebrated. When do you imagine the WI resolved to get a ban on smoking in public places? 1964. They were 15 years ahead of the UK Green Party in lobbying the government to do more about recycling and researching renewable energy. And the Terrence Higgins Trust paid them a great compliment in 1987 when they campaigned for the use of condoms for safe sex: 'The WI does not flinch from the more difficult issues.' Indeed it does not. And it certainly did not flinch during the Second World War.

My brother, Tim, is responsible for the title Jambusters but he could have no idea how accurate a title it is for the WI's wartime activities. At a fundamental level the WI bust bureaucratic logjams and kept the countryside ticking. Their general secretary, Frances Farrer, had a reputation for phoning government ministers before breakfast so she could be sure to get their attention. She ordered 430 tons of sugar on 6 September 1939 in response to calls from members all over the country worrying about the bumper harvest going to waste in gardens and orchards that had been evacuated. Result: 1740 tons of jam by October. Over the course of the war the WI made jam for the Ministry of Food, it collected herbs for the pharmaceutical industry, it advised the government on housing, sanitation and education and much more besides. But it also kept its membership entertained, informed and in touch.

Dame Frances Farrer
Gen. Sec of WI 1929-59

When I was writing Jambusters my biggest problem was too much information. The WI archives at national, county and village level offer minute and fascinating detail about anything and everything they have ever been involved in. But it is all impersonal, in the form of minutes, records and letters. Occasionally there is a hint of fury in Miss Farrer's letters to the Ministry of Mines about petrol rationing but by and large it is factual detail. Yet the WI is an organisation full of personalities and I needed to get into someone's head. This is where Edith Jones' diaries came in. She was WI to the core and embraced the organisation from the moment it started in her remote village on the English/Welsh border in 1931.

Christine Downes with her
great-aunt Edith's diaries

She was a tenant farmer's wife and had little opportunity to broaden her horizons or go beyond the market town of Shrewsbury until the WI arrived. This gave her the chance to travel - she went to London in 1938 to attend the National Federation's AGM - and to meet women from other WIs in Shropshire. She recorded her everyday life in brief but delicious detail in diaries given to her by the Electricity Supply Company. That was an irony: Red House Farm, where she lived, did not get electricity until 12 years after Edith retired and moved away. Some of the juxtapositions are delightful. In September 1943 she wrote: 'Italy surrenders. I put new flower in hat.' On another occasion her puppy had fleas. On that day, 20 July 1944, she recorded the following: 'Hitler's life threatened by bomb. Puppy is very lousy, so Margaret is sorry for him & gives him a sound bathing and dressing.' How extraordinary that she heard about the failed Stauffenberg plot on the day it happened.

Edith Jones with Leonard 1937

All during the war there was a running thread of anxiety in the diaries for the safety of her nephew, Leonard, who had lived with her since he was a boy of six. He survived the war, returning from Africa in 1945. So although Edith saw no action she was aware of the constant threat to her family life. Five days before the war ended she read about Hitler's suicide. That day she recorded simply: 'Hitler confirmed dead. Jack sows marigolds.' I found that extraordinarily poignant when I first read it. The madness of the war was over and her husband, Jack, planted marigolds to keep flies off her flowers and vegetables. And what did Edith Jones do the day after the war ended? She went to her WI meeting where they discussed bringing electricity to the village: 'no agreement' she wrote. She carried on going to WI meetings until shortly before her death. For her the WI was a way of life and the war represented merely an episode in that long life.