Joan's Picks: The Briar Club and Precipice

The Briar Club: Set in Washington DC in the 1950’s during the McCarthy years, this takes place in a boarding house run by a battle axe of a landlady who rents rooms to mostly single women, with strict rules and requirements they confirm to the mores of the day. They’re a disparate bunch of women, each with their own backgrounds and stories – but when Grace March arrives and sets up residence in a tiny room she gradually brings the women together and they become friends and neighbours. When there’s a murder in the house, they have to figure out once and for all – who is the true enemy in their midst? It’s terrific historical fiction, which Kate Quinn always delivers. 

Precipice: Again, this is wonderful historical fiction. It’s about Henry Asquith who was Prime Minister of Britain before WW2 but, at the age of 60 fell madly in love with a woman 35 years younger and used to obsessively send her three letters a day, in which he disclosed a lot of top secret information, and even included telegrams and letters he’d received from generals, ambassadors and royals. This is all true. He was reckless in the extreme and his letters began to be monitored by Scotland Yard, as he increasingly imperilled Britain, being totally hooked on the Hon Venetia Stanley when he should have been planning for war. 

LISTEN ABOVE

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudgin
from News Talks EDB and.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Joining us is Joan mackenzie. Good morning, Good morning. Tell
me about Kate Quinn's latest novel.

Speaker 3 (00:20):
Well, anybody who reads a lot may have picked up
one of her earlier books. She's a terrific writer. She
did one called The Rose Code The Ellis Network was
possibly my favorite, which was set during World War Two.
But she does a great job of the whole historical
story thing. And this one is set in the nineteen
fifties in a boarding house in Washington, DC. It's a

(00:40):
place for single women to live and they move in there.
They all loathe their landlady, but they have very different
backgrounds and quite disparate lives until one day a woman
called Grace March arrives and she takes up the attic
room upstairs and really starts to change things up. She
really establishes friendships between the women and they get drawn

(01:01):
together really as neighbors, and she even goes so far
as to host a supper club one night a week,
which is the glue that starts to hold them all together. Now,
at the beginning of the book, which is set four
years earlier than the main story. There's a shocking murder
at that boarding house, and then the rest of the
story goes on to explain their background and their stories
and you start to wonder exactly who is the enemy

(01:24):
in their midst. One of the things I think caate
Quinn does really well is she uses her characters to
bring in historical events or the historical background of the times.
So in this book, through the women, you get to
read about the McCarthy communist which hunt, There's the development
of the birth control pilled, there's the trial of the
Rosenbergs and the Sikorean War, and it's all set against

(01:47):
the story of these women's lives. And as I mentioned
the name Grace March at the beginning of my piece,
she is the one that really comes through and has
an extraordinary story to tell.

Speaker 1 (01:57):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
Historical fiction is the theme I think today, Joan, Isn't it?
What has Robert Harris got for us?

Speaker 1 (02:02):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (02:02):
I love Robert Harris. His new books called Precipice, set
just immediately before the start of the First World War,
when Herbert Henry Asquith was the Prime Minister. He was
sixty years old and he became completely infatuated with a
twenty six year old young aristocratic woman called Venetia Stanley.
He wrote to her three times a day. I have

(02:24):
no idea how he did his job. And one of
the fascinating things about this book is that he wrote
to her from cabinet, from important meetings, from inside the house.
He just couldn't stop himself, and a nice piece of
history for you. Back in the day there were twelve
postal deliveries a day in London apparently, and three in
the countryside, so she would get all of these very quickly.

(02:46):
He was incredibly cavalier with what he sent to her.
She had really sensitive pieces of government information about the
war which came to him from generals and even from
the Queen. And as I said, all of his stuff
was absolutely verbatim from what he wrote to her. Her
letters to him didn't survive, but it's an extraordinary piece

(03:06):
of pastry.

Speaker 2 (03:07):
Oh wonderful, Thank you so much, Joe. And those two
books again, Kate Quinn The Briar Club and Robert Harris
there with precipice. That last one sounds could be a
good age if you just haven't quite got Father's Day
organized just a little there.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
For more from the Sunday Session with Francesca Rudkin, Listen
live to news talks it'd be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.