All The Nice Girls

(Paperback)

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Description

It is 1942 and the war is not going well. As part of the war effort the Ashworth Grammar School for Girls signs up for the Merchant Navy s Ship Adoption Scheme. The headmistress, the lovely, essentially serious Cynthia Maitland, who lost her lover in the First World War, believes the idea will broaden the horizons of her girls, especially Polly and Jen, bright sixth formers eager to live and love despite it all.

All is as it should be in the line of duty until Captain Josh Percival and his officers of the SS Treverran visit Ashworth...The choices that follow will disrupt all their lives, reverberating even to the next generation, when, decades later, life and love are on the line again.

Reviews

A poignant and pleasurable novel .

SUNDAY TIMES Penny Perrick

Bakewell delivers a warm, good humoured story of wartime relationships and a thrilling account of life and death on the convoys

GUARDIAN Rachel Hore

Marvellously exciting, heartbreaking, gruelling and an unexpectedly muscular and masculine treat in the middle of what is essentially a wistful romance . . . the outcome is poignant, romantic, deeply satisfying

DAILY EXPRESS Jennifer Selway

A beautifully evocative novel, full of romance, tragedy and the pull of family bonds .

SUNDAY EXPRESS Jane Clinton 4 stars

A strong, romantic plot and believable well-realised characters . . . Bakewell for the Booker

READERS DIGEST A N Wilson

Bakewell conjures up a cracking wartime atmosphere

DAILY MAIL Helen Brown

It is formidably researched and evokes real atmosphere

SAGA magazine Emma Soames

A well-crafted romantic yarn . . . an absorbing human tale

MAIL ON SUNDAY Max Davidson

A fascinating first novel

WATERSTONE S BOOKS QUARTERLY Lindsey Russell

Poignant and moving . . . Full of telling detail, love and longing, and all the pleasures of a black and white movie on a Sunday afternoon

NEW BOOKS MAGAZINE Linda Leatherbarrow

Well written and imbued with an air of authenticity

LONDON PAPER Lottie Moggach

Author Bio

A prominent figure in TV and the arts in Britain, Joan Bakewell has been a broadcaster for over forty years, a print journalist for over twenty years, and has published her autobiography, The Centre of the Bed. ALL THE NICE GIRLS is her first novel. She was made Dame in 2008.