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.

When the First World War begins, Lucy’s father loses his job at the Stock Exchange and she is forced to leave school as the family can’t afford for her to stay on. So, at 16, she needs to earn a living. But how? Women don’t even have the vote; middle-class women are still supposed to see marriage as their ultimate goal. Rescued by a financial contribution from her godmother, Lucy goes to secretarial college and trains as a secretary. This is the beginning of her initiation into the world of the office.

“It was a new thing for me to have a Luncheon and Tea fund. At first I went to Lyons Corner House and alternated between a cup of soup and a roll (4 pence) and a glass of milk and an unbuttered scone. I looked forward to the days when I should be independent and have steak and kidney pudding and fried potatoes like the older clerks and typists I met there…”

Lucy’s working life begins in an office of the Red Cross, with the melancholy job of notifying the families of those who are wounded and missing in the War. From here, she progresses to a Government office and casts a sharp eye on the men who run it:

“Men in offices are, for the most part, Deadly Bores. They suffer from indigestion and ask you to buy their pills in your lunch hour. They seldom think of their girl employees as human beings at all. What they would prefer, if they were procurable and didn’t cost too much, would be a series of automatic machines, into which you put the week’s salary and took out the letters at the other end. They would prefer these to young women, because you can kick a machine, if you happen to be put out about something, without being hauled into court for assault.”

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