Diana Quick reads the autobiography of Lucy Malleson, a detective writer of the 1930s and 40s who wrote under the name Anthony Gilbert.

First published in 1940, it’s a book which is valuable now for its sharp social history of working life in the early decades of the 20th century, and particularly for its focus on what it was like for women at work in offices.

At the end of the First World War, Lucy becomes a secretary in the newly-created Health Ministry, desperately trying to draft in enough doctors to cope with the flu epidemic.

“The influenza scourge was ravishing the country, and we had to get as many doctors as possible back from France in record time. Conditions in the country were unspeakable; corpses lay for days unburied because there was no doctor to sign the necessary certificates. Doctors themselves contracted the disease and died on their feet.”

Having grown up during the War, peace time comes as a shock, and brings with it a strong sense of disillusion. At the age of 20, Lucy must earn a living in a labour market crowded with men returning from the front. She’s not the only woman now forced to compete for jobs:

“The War had brought women all those privileges that the Suffragettes had fought for so fiercely. The army of women who had flooded into offices during the War could not be shooed back to their homes, like a flock of hens…”

Lucy gets a job, and a good one – earning four pounds a week. But in her new role, she sees, and has to turn away, all the men who come to her office desperately hoping for work.

Astonishingly modern, though a hundred years old, Lucy Malleson’s sharp and humorous account of working life is vividly brought to life by Diana Quick.

Reader: Diana Quick
Producer: Elizabeth Burke

A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 4 Show less