The Gulls Fly Inland

It is October 1939. Blanche Lancret is a French exile in England, looking after her friend Annabelle's baby. She is waiting for news of Annabelle's brother Vernon, who is fighting the enemy in France, and of her surrogate mother Tante Julie, a rich démi-mondaine who refuses to leave Paris.

To maintain her sang-froid Blanche writes her journal, reflecting on the story of her love for Vernon while she lived with Tante Julie in Paris. His American wealth does not make him correct enough for Tante Julie's servants, who ensure that Blanche and Vernon will not meet. Now Vernon is caught in marriage to the impervious Bostonian Leonora and Blanche realises how they have been kept apart. As the years wind forward Blanche and Vernon are caught tight in other people's machinations, and only the war might set him free.

Sylvia Thompson's glorious, passionate novel of the Second World War is a sumptuous romance set in the imperturbable correctness of demi-monde Paris, and in fast-moving 1930s London and Boston. Blanche negotiates the intrigue of others and stifles her passion with a stoic sadness. Thompson's storytelling is austerely correct and devastating in its emotional truth. A wonderful forgotten novel from 1941, now reissued with an introduction by Faye Hammill, Professor of English at the University of Glasgow.