One of those books that would have sunk into oblivion if Virago didn't have to trawl through history reprinting every forgotten female author. It's the kind of slice of life story that was popular in the '30s, only this one was written with hindsight in the late '40s. All the characters the author approves of share the same views (a kind of little Englander attitude full of complacent certainty) and speak in the same voice - obliquely but not interestingly oblique, just infuriatingly unspecific. Part of a curated collection of forgotten works by early to mid-century women writers, the British Library Women Writers series highlights the best middlebrow fiction from the 1910s to the 1960s, offering escapism, popular appeal and plenty of period detail to amuse, surprise and inform.

As well as looking to the past, A Poetic City will touch on issues from Chatterton’s lifetime which are still relevant today, such as young people and mental health, and fake news. War was horrible, but there were worse things. Indeed, in conditions of her own choosing, Miss Spanner would not have shrunk from it. The age for combatants, if she had the making of the conventions of war, would start at about forty-five and there would be no limit at the other end. All but the halt and the blind would be in it and she saw this army of her creation, with grey hairs and wrinkles under the helmets, floundering through the mud, swimming rivers, trying to run, gasping for breath, falling out exhausted or deciding it was time for a truce and a nice cup of tea. Chatterton left Bristol to pursue his writing career in London in April 1770. Just four months later, he died in what was once thought to be a suicide after his failure to find success and wealth but is now considered an accidental overdose. Either way, his death at such a tragically young age was part of what cemented his legacy as a romantic figure. This is a look at a society which is about to undergo great change, but Young’s focus is also on relationships and women’s role. The interactions between the teenagers seem to be overshadowed by what we know is coming.

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On the other hand I gained a fascinating insight into how married women's roles were perceived before the war and the kind of desperation many of them must have been sentenced to. After Henderson's retirement and the death of his wife, Young moved with him to Bradford on Avon in Wiltshire. They never married. During the Second World War, she worked actively in air raid precautions. She lived in Wiltshire with Henderson until her death from lung cancer in 1949. He pitied widows but he distrusted them. They knew too much. As free as unmarried women, they were fully armed; this was an unfair advantage, and when it was combined with beauty, and air of well-being, a gaiety which, in women over forty had an unsuitable hint of mischief in it, he felt that in this easy conquest over, or incapacity for grief, all manhood was insulted, while all manhood, including his own, was probably viewed by that woman as a likely prey.”

The women’s responses to the threat of war are personal. Rosamund feels Britain’s willingness to negotiate with a set of “gangsters” as deeply shaming; Bertha sees through her husband’s self-deceptions about his war “principles” and much else besides. It is a question of honour, both national and personal. Is Britain willing to secure its own peace at the expense of another nation? Deen, Stella (2001). "Emily Hilda young's miss mole: Female modernity and the insufficiencies of the domestic novel". Women's Studies. 30 (3): 351–368. doi: 10.1080/00497878.2001.9979382. S2CID 143989384. Dandara’s plans for the Robins & Day Peugeot garage will be made public in early 2022, the company said. It is a story of families and of marriages but also of the choices women had. An unhappy marriage, never married or separated (I don't think the author could have been too enamoured of the marriage state as there is no evidence of the other option - a happy marriage!) This was the first E.H. Young novel I bought, but it’s now actually the fourth one that I’ve read – Miss Mole, William, and The Misses Mallett being on my have-now-read list, with William finding its way to the 50 Books You Must Read But May Not Have Heard About list. How does Chatterton Square fare on my list?Everybody else is quite sure there will be war, particularly the ones who had been in the first war. World War 1 hangs over everything I think, Fergus has almost certainly been damaged by his experiences in that war, hence his moods and rages, things that Rosamunde had probably not bargained for when they were first married. Despite everything Rosamunde is an optimistic woman, which is just as well. It was E.H. Young’s final novel, and there is a great deal of maturity here. I would never have mistaken it for a young writer’s first effort – because the characters and their experiences are described so subtly, so gradually and with such sophistication. As usual, I am getting ahead of myself. Who are these characters?