Patricia Beer

It is a powerful act of make-believe to put all your foes together in a building and set fire to them; it has also happened in history. At many points throughout The Intruder fantasy and reality come together in this way. In the preface, Gillian Tindall states that she is not writing about identifiable people or places, yet what she relates is firmly based on actual events, including the final tragedy; it is also the stuff of nightmares. ‘History couldn’t possibly be true because it was too awful,’ Jane, the heroine, used to think as a child. This book is the story of her enlightenment.

It is mid-June. In the stair-well Darkness has papered every wall. The air is cool. Clothes feel too thin. The green outside is looking in Through the opaque leaded pane. The eclipse of summer comes again.

Beside me stands the black-eyed cat Whose yellow stare saw winter out. Now that the leaves have mobbed the light Her deeper eyes are stripped for night. In dealings with the longest day We...

Arriving early at the cemetery For ‘the one o’clock’, we looked around At the last sparks of other people’s grief, The flowers fading back into the ground.

A card inscribed ‘With reverent sympathy From the Magicians’ Club’ was propped against A top hat made of blossoms and a wand Tied with a black velvet bow. We sensed

The rabbits and the ladies sawn...

The Grand Tour paused at Ravenna. Back in England Rain closed in from the sea and attacked the windows But the two wealthy young women Saw mosaic walls whenever they shut their eyes, Thought of those craftsmen who could never be pitied Working for God in the sun.

The house they lived in was already childlike With a pleasant sense of games still to be played Past youthfulness and prime. The...

George Gissing was convinced that the year 1900 would make all the difference. Writing his study of Charles Dickens in the late 1890s, he refers to his own generation as those ‘upon whom the new centurys breaking’. And one of the things the new century would bring was the New Woman.