Bless 'Em All

Allen Saddler

'The firm had standards, a position in the trade. Small booksellers, in all parts of the country, relied on Green’s by-return service. They knew that however obscure, however out of the way the request, Green’s would supply. If they hadn’t got it in stock they would send somebody out to the publishers with an order that would be fetched back the same day. They knew that Green’s stocked up on books that were going out of print and hoarded them like precious manuscripts. It had taken years to build up the stock.’

On the the evening of the 29th of December 1940, the entire London publishing industry was detroyed by a German bombing raid . . .

Bless ‘Em All is a Carveresque portrait of a cross-section of London society during the Blitz. Centered around Green’s, a London wholesaler/booksellers Allen Saddler masterfully introduces us to an eclectic and compelling cast of characters: Maurice Green is a book wholesaler, conscientous and hardworking, with a reputation to uphold. Bernard Green is his brother; sleazy and disreputable, his part of the business takes in the ‘Leicester Square run’ selling under-the-counter copies of D.H. Lawrence and photographic 'art’ to places in Soho. At an ‘inadvertent' outing to an illicit speakeasy, the pair meet Bunty and Betty, the former a blonde bombshell who also happens to be deaf and dumb, the latter a young housewife so naïve that Maurice ends up giving her a job out of pity. Tim is Bunty’s husband. Short, stumpy and surly, Tim works for the Water Board and appears to have no idea about Bunty’s outings with men in smart cars and tailormade suits. Jimmy answered an advert that read ‘Smart Boy Wanted’ and works at Green’s, collecting and delivering books from the publishing houses on Paternoster Row and Warwick Square, all in the shadow of St Pauls and all doomed . . .

These characters and many more are thrown together into a riotous wartime tale of prostitution, romance, murder and good old–fashioned selling of books.

Reviews of Bless 'em All:

'Allen Saddler’s Bless ’Em All is subtitled A Blitz novel. Its emphasis is on the eternally absorbing paradox, in Second World War London, of ordinary lives pursuing their respective courses against a background of communal loss and annihilation. Booksellers Bernard and Maurice Green; their invoice clerk Rosa Tcherny, “a bit of all right”; perky Jimmy
the office boy, with his taste for pork-dripping and the Gem magazine; Bunty, on the game up West; and Gloria, the resting actress whose dramatic quietus owes nothing to the Luftwaffe: none of them is conspicuous for courage or glamour. What matters to them all is being “free to act natural”, as Jimmy puts it, even if, like the hotel porter Bert Penrose, they should end up minus a spouse and a leg.

Allen Saddler carefully avoids any hint of “London can take it” Cockney-sparrer sentimentality. The baldness of his characters’ conversational exchanges is as convincing as the unemotional narrative, pared down to the sinew of an existence suddenly robbed of anything like certainty or expectation: “Edie kept coming, day after day, but she didn’t bring any joy”. Even while it saves them, the mood of resignation which forms an essential ingredient of such lives has its own dangerous powers of
corrosion.' – Johnathan Keates, TLS

'Sarah Waters take note. This is how to write a Blitz novel. In last year's disappointing Night Watch, Waters tried to portray both the drama and the drabness of war–time London and ended up simply writing drably. Saddler successfully interweaves the tales of a collection of lower–class Londoners, and their connections – through work, love and lust – with a pair of relatively well-to-do brothers in the book trade. The bombs begin to fall. Some characters end badly, some well and some, literally, soldier on. Saddler has a touch of the Orwells about his pure, clear prose–style, which is particularly effective in painting London itself as a living backdrop to this moving story of a mundane world suddenly run mad.' **** – Joe Cushley, What's On in London

'Whatever it is that you normally look for in a good book, Allen Saddler's Bless 'Em All is guaranteed to have it. Jam-packed with humour, murder, lust and social history, this novel will surely have every reader's eyes popping from start to finish. Set in the the early 1940s, Bless'em All follows the lives of a rather eccentric collection of London residents, at the centre of which are chalk and cheese brothers, Maurice and Bernard, who cannot agree on the future of their family Bookselling business. While literature lover Maurice wants to stick to the classics Bernard's hand in the business involves dealing sleazy backhanders of supposed 'photographic art' and DH Lawrence to the sketchy back streets of Soho.

'Meanwhile an unlikely friendship forms between housewives Bunty and Betty. A beautiful blonde bombshell, Bunty is completely deaf and dumb. The moment her husband goes to work each morning, a lavishly dressed Bunty prepares to spend her day dancing in the hottest hostess club in Soho. Bunty's neighbour is young, naïve, new to married life and very bored. Caught up in the excitement of Bunty's glamorous clothes and glitzy lifestyle, Betty doesn't realize what she is letting herself in for. Throw into this mix some more brilliantly crafted characters, the tension of the blitz and a tur of extraordinary events and you've got a blast of a read. A journalist with four novels, many children's stories, TV programmes and radion monologues under his belt, Allen Saddler's experience and talent as a writer is clear in this latest release. His style is intriguing, humorous and easy to read. But what really makes Bless 'Em All a compulsive page–turner is its sense of realism. Having spent the war years in London himself, Saddler seems to invest some personal experiences within his fictionalized tale. A tiny bit Desperate Housewives, a tad Eastenders and a pinch Midsomer Murders, Bless 'Em All is a superior, unisex version of a soap opera. This engaging novel will suit anyone who is just a little bit nosey.' – Big Issue
'This riotous wartime tale of prostitution, romance murder and the old-fashioned business of selling books comes from a Devon author with excellent credential in journalism and writing for radio and television.
In a portrait of a cross–section of London society during the Blitz, revealing that they were not heroic in the convential sense and that most of them regarded the bombing as an intrusion, a nuisance to be endured.
With its wealth of quirky characters, this highly entertaining novel exposes the misplaced optimism. naked opportunism and matrimonial misdemeanours in a comic tour de force of considerable verve, perceptiveness and period authority.' – Western Morning News

ALLEN SADDLER is a writer and journalist. He is the author of four novels, nine children’s books and eight plays. He has written a sitcom for BBC2 and more than two dozen plays and monologues for BBC Radio Four. He has reviewed drama for the Guardian, Independent, The Stage and many theatre publications. He has written features for the Guardian, Independent, Daily Telegraph, Sunday Times, Observer, Time Out, The Big Issue, The Oldie and a number of others. He lives in Totnes, Devon.

PETER OWEN

Bless 'Em All

Allen Saddler