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.

Lucy is forced to leave school at 16 and works during the First World War in a variety of office jobs. But early on she has conceived an ambition to be a writer, and has been sending off poems and stories to magazines, typing away secretly on the office machines in her lunch hour. Then, in her early 20s, she develops an eye condition which prevents her from going to work. Suddenly, for a few months, she is able to stay home and to write full-time. Excitedly, she completes her first novel. At the same time, she receives an unexpected fan letter from a strange woman who has read one of her poems in a magazine. Lucy has been signing her work with her initials only, as people don’t take women writers seriously. Her fan, who has invited her to tea, is disappointed:

“I thought you would be a young man of 27 with golden hair,” she said. I apologised. Neither my sex nor the colour of my hair depended on my own choice, I assured her.”

After repeated rejections from publishers, Lucy is inspired. She decides to take on a man’s name: Anthony Gilbert. And signed by a man, her novel is accepted. But the publishers need a photograph.

“I went to the hairdressing department of the Army and Navy Stores, and inquired: ‘Do you stock wigs and beards?’
An enthralling conversation ensued. As to the wig – what shade? Where parting? Covering or not covering ears? When it came to the beard, it seemed there was yet more choice. I decided on a good square beard. So I paid five and sixpence and a full beard and moustache were ordered.”

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