Ambulance Girls At War

by Deborah Burrows

  Celia and Simon stayed in London, raised five children and remained devoted to each other. Their beloved parrot, Bobby, lived until the ripe old age of forty. After a period of intense mourning, they got another African Grey that they also called Bobby. Simon delighted in teaching it bawdy songs, to Celia’s apparent fury but secret amusement (as she admitted to me). Simon was eventually knighted for services to medicine, and visitors to the home of Sir Simon and Lady Levy never quite knew what to expect from Bobby the parrot.

  I moved to America with my husband. Michael went back to the FBI and for many years I ran a successful dance academy in Washington DC. We are the proud parents of three daughters and our youngest, Venetia, is the shortest, at five foot seven. Michael calls her the runt of the litter, but is enormously proud that she is a principal ballerina with the New York City Ballet. She was considered a giant when they first took her on, but nowadays taller women are becoming more accepted in dance, thank goodness.

  HISTORICAL NOTES

  Jack Moray is loosely based on Eric Roberts, a former bank clerk and MI5 agent in Second World War London. Using the alias Jack King and operating out of a flat in the Edgware Road, he used a fake Gestapo identity card to pose as a German agent. He won the trust of fascist groups and individuals in Britain, many of whom were actuated by virulent anti-Semitism. They passed on secret information to him in the hope that it would be sent to Berlin. It was a very dangerous and very successful deception that prevented highly secret information from arriving in Germany, including reports about secret research being undertaken to develop a jet aircraft, secret trials relating to a new amphibious tank and secret British tactics to evade German air defences.

  Captain Temple is loosely based on Maxwell Knight, a British spymaster, naturalist and broadcaster, who was reputedly the model for the James Bond character, M. He operated out of a flat in Dolphin Square, and his agents – many of whom were women – were very successful in infiltrating and neutralising fascists and fascist sympathisers in wartime Britain. He recruited Eric Roberts. His most notable success was the infiltration of the pro-German and fascist organisation, the Right Club. This resulted in the trial and imprisonment of Tyler Kent in 1940.

  Tyler Kent was an American diplomat and fifth columnist. When working as a cypher clerk at the US Embassy in London in 1939–40 he stole thousands of secret documents, which he gave to the Right Club. When Ambassador Kennedy revoked his diplomatic immunity, he was charged with obtaining documents that ‘might be directly or indirectly useful to an enemy’, tried in secret at the Old Bailey and imprisoned for seven years.

  Radar: The development of the cavity magnetron by John Randall and Henry Boot at the University of Birmingham in 1940 has been described as ‘the invention that changed the course of the war’. Britain shared the invention with the USA, where it was used it to develop airborne radar (RAdio Detection and Ranging). The technology was far in advance of that used by the Germans and Japanese and it gave the Allies a considerable advantage in aerial warfare. Later in the war, it enabled the destruction of many V-1 flying bombs before they could hit London.

  FURTHER READING

  I could not have written the novel without recourse to the work done by others. As always, I acknowledge my debt to the digitised newspapers on the National Library of Australia site, Trove.nla.gov.au. And I spent many happy hours in the Bodleian Library Upper Reading Room in Oxford devouring information about the Blitz.

  The following books stand out as invaluable:

  Beardmore, George, Civilians at War: Journals 1938–1946, London: John Murray, 1984.

  Gardiner, Juliet. The Blitz: The British Under Attack. London: HarperCollins, 2010.

  Hodgson, Vere, Few Eggs and No Oranges: A Diary Showing How Unimportant People in London and Birmingham Lived Throughout the War Years. London: Persephone, 1999.

  Holland, Irene, Tales of a Tiller Girl. HarperElement, 2014.

  Miller, Joan, One Girl’s War, Brandon Book Publishers Ltd, 1986.

  Nixon, Barbara, Raiders Overhead. London: Lindsay Drummond, 1943.

  Raby, Angela, The Forgotten Service: Auxiliary Ambulance Station 39, Weymouth Mews. London. Battle of Britain International, 1999.

  Willetts, Paul, Rendezvous at the Russian Tea Rooms. Constable, 2015.

  Ziegler, Philip. London at War 1939–1945. London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1995.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thanks, as always, to my wonderful husband, Toby.

  Thanks also to my ever-supportive Australian agent, Sheila Drummond, and Anna Carmichael in London. And to the team at Ebury Press, especially Gillian Green and Katie Seaman. And thanks to Justine Taylor for her thoughtful editing.

  Thanks to my dear friends in Perth and in Oxford – you know who you are – especially Felicity Davis and Ilse Peterson, who read early versions of the book and gave their usual insightful comments. And many thanks to Liz and Tim Taylor for patiently answering my questions about Sheffield slang.

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Epub ISBN: 9781473550377

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  Ebury Press, an imprint of Ebury Publishing

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  Ebury Press is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com

  Copyright © Deborah Burrows, 2019

  Jacket photographs: women by Head Design

  background images © Getty Images; barrage balloons © Topfoto

  Jacket: www.headdesign.co.uk

  Deborah Burrows has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental

  First published in the UK by Ebury Press in 2019

  www.penguin.co.uk

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  Hardback ISBN 9781785034640