In March, 1941, an unlikely rag-bag of characters comes together in a small village on the bleak Norfolk coast. They include the conceited Ambrose Hilliard, once voted Britain’s third most popular movie star, but now a sadly faded attraction; Catrin Cole, a pretty young copywriter who provides ‘women’s’ dialogue for Ministry of Information films on such topics as the benefits of eating carrots and swedes; spinsterish Edith Beadmore, a former seamstress at Madame Tussauds, living in East Anglia to escape the London Blitz; and weedy lance-corporal Arthur Frith, hopelessly out of his depth as special military adviser to the project which has thrown them all together - the making of a morale-boosting feature film based on a supposedly true story about twin sisters taking their father’s boat to help the evacuation of troops from Dunkirk. The production isn’t helped when Chopper, a bull terrier who has a key role, quits after being injured, and Carl Lundback, a handsome American pilot who can’t act, has to be written into the script to give the film transatlantic appeal. Will their efforts ever make the big screen? This affectionate, funny and brilliantly observed novel has the charm of a black and white movie filtered through the knowing eye of a modern writer, whose sparkling prose is as highly crafted as an ivory carving. Its wry humour is complemented by the genuine drama faced by each of the characters, as they struggle to lead normal lives amid the destruction and deprivation of wartime.
After graduating in medicine, Lissa Evans spent four years as a hospital doctor, working as a senior house officer in paediatrics, casualty and psychiatry. She had an interest in performing and in her spare time did some stand-up comedy.
She gave up medicine to become a producer for BBC Radio Light Entertainment. After five years, she moved to television, first as a producer, then a producer/director, working in comedy. Her credits include Room 101, The Kumars at Number 42 (both of which she helped to create), Father Ted, and Clive Anderson Talks Back. She has won a BAFTA, and three International Emmys.
She began writing her first novel in 1999, and Their Finest Hour and a Half is her third book. Last year, she completed a children’s book which was bought by Random House.
She still does occasional jobs for radio and TV, recently directing an episode of Have I Got News for You, and producing Clive Anderson’s Chat Room for Radio 2. Lissa lives in London with her husband and two daughters.
1. What do you learn about civilian life in the Second World War? What is the most surprising thing?
2.Catrin goes from working in a café in south Wales to writing film scripts. Does the author make this rapid progress credible? Could it happen today?
3.Does the novel manage to combine humour and the realities of war successfully? Does humour have the effect of heightening the episodes of death and destruction?
4.Can you think of other humorous novels about war? What similarities do they have with this book?
5.Which characters remind us of the seriousness of the situation?
6.What do you think of the detail about film-making and scriptwriting? Instructive, or too much insider information?
7.It is easy to imagine the book being made into a film. Who would you cast in the main roles?
8.Who are your favourite characters? Does your view change over the course of the novel?
9.What does life after the war hold for Ambrose, Catrin and the others? Will the war have turned out to be their own finest hour and a half?
At 7.30am on a December day in 1996, I was standing on a frost-covered hillock on a golf-course in the west of Ireland. I was wearing full wet-weather gear, walking boots, a woolly hat and thermal gloves. Of the 50 other people also standing around, waiting for the sun to creep over the Mullaghs, 47 were in similar gear to me, two were disguised as giant peanuts, and one was dressed as a priest. We were there to shoot a five second sequence for Father Ted. We had three other scenes to complete that day, all in different locations, the forecast was for rain, and one of the peanuts had hurt his ankle getting out of the minibus. As producer, I felt the crushing weight of the world on my shoulders.
This typifies filming: shed-loads of time, anxiety, expertise, labour and money all hurled in the direction of something utterly trivial. And what also typifies filming is how vital it all seemed. As George Arliss, the great pre-war actor, put it: ‘Once work begins in the studio, nothing outside is of any relative importance.’
For years, I wanted to write about life behind the camera. I fiddled about with ideas, and settings, and one thought kept recurring: What would happen if the world outside was actually in turmoil? During the Blitz, for instance, when bombs were dropping daily on London, had it still taken 12 people to decide on the colour of the leading man’s tie? When real-life tragedy was taking place in the city outside, and half the crew were sleepless after a night of bombardment, had there still been groans of despair when some hapless clod sneezed during a take? I began to look into it, and the answers were...yes and yes.
In so many ways, the world I started researching was one that I already knew - an arena in which writers mistrusted directors, directors despaired of producers, producers ignored writers and actors tottered round the set, hoping for just a tiny whisker of respect for the near-insupportable artistic burden imposed by the demands of their craft. And also a comfy chair. And a cup of tea with just a splash of milk. And is there an ashtray?
But I was also struck by the number of extra obstacles that wartime film-makers had to contend with. For a start, every draft of every script had to be approved by the Ministry of Information, who also controlled the film stock. Members of the cast and crew could be called-up at any moment (22 different cameramen worked on The Foreman Went to France), travel was restricted and even the paper for the scripts and the wood for the sets were rationed. Studios were requisitioned by the government for use as warehouses; air-raids interrupted filming; ‘national interest’ restricted the range and content of film plots.
And despite all this, the British film industry, moribund during the thirties, grew and flourished during the war. A whole new genre of films began to be made, films without stars or glamour, films that reflected the lives of ordinary people. Acting became more understated and dialogue more realistic. Plots began to be based on true stories or, at least, stories that felt true. And rain or shine, shrapnel or rocket, blackout or daylight, the cinemas were always full.
So in the end, I found myself writing about a subject much larger than that of simply making a film. When London was being bombed for 91 nights in a row, people still cut their toe-nails, gossiped, worried about getting a hair-cut, fell in love, bought books, moaned about their bosses, cursed when a shoe-lace broke, complained that Mars Bars weren’t as large as they used to be, went dancing, found Sundays boring and got on with their jobs.
And if the job in question was that of polishing a joke to mirror brightness, or ironing 75 pairs of extras’ trousers, or saying the line ‘What on earth is that?’ while looking just to the right of camera with an expression of pained concern, well, who’s to say that that didn’t, in some way, contribute to the war effort...?
