- Written by Helen Peters
- Published by Nosy Crow
WW2 is now generally studied in Year 6 of primary school, and to help the children experience and understand what life was like they turn to authors such as Phil Earle and Lesley Parr to help the children understand.
These two authors have between them written some of the best books that deal with WW2, well now we can add a new author into the mix.
Helen Peters has found an area that hasn’t been covered, and boy did she do a good job of it. This book looks at the war in a new angle.
Some secrets are just too dangerous to know… A gripping World War II story about how two girls foil an aristocratic plot to bring down the government and hand the country to the Nazis…
When Sidney Dashworth’s school is evacuated to a huge stately home in the countryside, she thinks she’s going to spend the war being very bored. At least her brother must be having fun, flying his Spitfire all over France! But soon Sidney and a housemaid called Nancy discover that the Earl is up to no good. He has secret nighttime meetings with mysterious men from the government and seems to be hiding something sinister on his land. At first it’s all terribly thrilling, investigating by creeping about at night and finding secret passageways, but soon everything takes a deadly turn. Sidney’s brother goes missing over France and the war hits home with a terrible reality. The Earl and his evil plotters must be stopped, or nothing will ever be the same again…
In this book we follow 2 completely different characters, Nancy a maid who has to work extremely hard to earn money and Sidney a school girl who has a rich background. It comes across to the reader that these girls are similar in age.
This is a gripping read which makes full use of the country house setting, and The idea that a posh girl’s school could get moved into a big stately home during evacuation is entirely plausible- secret passageways and priceless artefacts play a key role in the story, and the upstairs-downstairs divide between Sidney and Nancy is carefully explored; initially Sidney envies the freedom she thinks Nancy has compared to all the rules she is required to follow, but becomes more aware of her privilege as the novel progresses. In a nice twist, Helen Peters makes Nancy brighter than Sidney and her classmates, but she is unable to take up her grammar school place because her family needs her to start working as soon as she turns fourteen. I loved these scenes when a humble housemaid was correcting the girls.
You can see the class divide at times between the girls and they don’t always see eye to eye. There is a subplot for each character and they are both experiencing different situations. Sidney is worried about her adored brother who has left to fight for his country and Nancy is very clued in about what is happening to jewish refugees and helps a jewish friend escape the house.
Helen Peters also explores some important but overlooked aspects of WW2 history, most significantly the collusion of several British aristocrats in plans to overthrow the government and usher in Nazi rule. The novel exposes the double-standard by which different types of ‘traitor’ were treated – a Jewish housemaid is dismissed and her brother is interned as an enemy alien despite their hatred of the Nazi regime, while Lord Evesham’s status protects him from suspicion.
There are moments when you think it’s all over for the girls and other times you wish you were there.
I think this will be an important book for Year 6 children to read during their topic as they offer them a different insight into the war.
samjdthomas.home.blog 