My Turn to Make the Tea is the third semi-autobiographical book by the British author Monica Dickens. First published in 1951 by Michael Joseph, the book relates Dickens' time working as a junior reporter on the Downingham Post [1] in the fictional town of Downingham.
The book is important for revealing the obstacles faced by many early women reporters in the world of journalism. [2] [3]
Set just after World War II, My Turn to Make the Tea relates the story of 'Poppy', the new and inexperienced junior reporter on the old-established provincial newspaper the Downingham Post in Downingham. She is nicknamed 'Poppy' by her co-workers “for no better reason than that a Sunday paper was running a crude cartoon about a blonde called Poppy Pink”. The book takes its title from the fact that, as the only female member of staff, it is always Poppy's turn to make the tea.
The book starts with Poppy finding a room in a boarding house with her irascible chain-smoking landlady Mrs Goff who seldom has a good word to say about anyone except Mr Goff and who tyrannically presides over her lodgers. Other boarders at No 5 Bury Road include the stage acrobat Maimie and her Japanese husband Tick Ling; Win and Connie who are looking for affluent husbands and who fill the bathroom with drying stockings and underwear; Margaret, who dies after a botched abortion, and Myra Nelson, an aspiring ballet dancer who tries to keep the fact she is married secret from her employer, dance instructor the Signora.
Initially keen to make changes to the newspaper by introducing innovative ideas such as a Woman's Column, Poppy soon discovers that the Downingham Post is deeply entrenched in the past and tradition, always including the same features and style of reporting the news because its readers don't like change and feel comfortable with the familiar format. Her attempts at court reporting were not wholly successful with the editor, the middle-aged bachelor Mr Pellet, who is convinced that he knows what the Post's readers want.
After a murder scare at No 5 Bury Road and a night at the fair with Mr Pellet, Poppy eventually has to leave the paper after removing a small article from the press to protect her fellow lodger, Myra, because it reveals she is secretly married to an army deserter. As she leaves the paper, Poppy agrees with Mr Pellet that "women were a nuisance in an office, anyway."
The book is set in the fictional town of Downingham, but in real life Dickens worked for the Hertfordshire Express in Hitchin in Hertfordshire. [4] Dickens relates living in Bury Road in Downingham with a music school at the bottom of the road. In reality her lodgings were located in Highbury Road which still has the North Herts Music School at the end of the road.
The glass roofed shopping arcade, stepped war memorial and market square mentioned in the book can still be found in Hitchin. Nearby is the former Fairfield Hospital (now Fairfield) which appears as the Northgate Asylum in the book.
The real life editor of the Hertfordshire Express Ernest 'Hoddy' Hodson became Mr Pellet in the book. [4]
In 2004 My Turn to Make the Tea was adapted as a four-part radio serial for BBC Radio 4; the book was adapted for radio by Sheila Goff and was directed by David Hunter. It featured Alice Hart as Poppy, Joanne Froggatt as Myra, Keith Barron as Mr Pellet, Stephen Critchlow as Victor and Annabelle Dowler as Maimie. [5] [6]
Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy's Progress, is the second novel by English author Charles Dickens. It was originally published as a serial from 1837 to 1839 and as a three-volume book in 1838. The story follows the titular orphan, who, after being raised in a workhouse, escapes to London, where he meets a gang of juvenile pickpockets led by the elderly criminal Fagin, discovers the secrets of his parentage, and reconnects with his remaining family.
Hitchin is a market town in the North Hertfordshire district of Hertfordshire, England. The town dates from at least the 7th century. It lies in the valley of the River Hiz at the north-eastern end of the Chiltern Hills. It is 16 miles (26 km) north-west of the county town of Hertford, and 35 miles (56 km) north of London. The population at the 2021 census was 35,220.
Claire Tomalin is an English journalist and biographer known for her biographies of Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Samuel Pepys, Jane Austen and Mary Wollstonecraft.
Baldock is a historic market town in the North Hertfordshire district of Hertfordshire, England. The River Ivel rises from springs in the town. It lies 33 miles (53 km) north of London and 14 miles (23 km) north northwest of the county town of Hertford. Nearby towns include Royston to the northeast, Letchworth and Hitchin to the southwest and Stevenage to the south.
Bleak House is a novel by English author Charles Dickens, first published as a 20-episode serial between 12 March 1852 and 12 September 1853. The novel has many characters and several subplots, and is told partly by the novel's heroine, Esther Summerson, and partly by an omniscient narrator. At the centre of Bleak House is a long-running legal case in the Court of Chancery, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, which comes about because a testator has written several conflicting wills. In a preface to the 1853 first edition, Dickens said there were many actual precedents for his fictional case. One such was probably Thellusson v Woodford, in which a will read in 1797 was contested and not determined until 1859. Though many in the legal profession criticised Dickens's satire as exaggerated, Bleak House helped support a judicial reform movement that culminated in the enactment of legal reform in the 1870s.
Our Mutual Friend, published in 1864–1865, is the last novel completed by English author Charles Dickens and is one of his most sophisticated works, combining savage satire with social analysis. It centres on, in the words of critic J. Hillis Miller, quoting the book's character Bella Wilfer, "money, money, money, and what money can make of life".
Hard Times: For These Times is the tenth novel by English author Charles Dickens, first published in 1854. The book surveys English society and satirises the social and economic conditions of the era.
Hinxworth is a village and civil parish in North Hertfordshire, England. It sits just off the Great North Road between Baldock and Biggleswade. It has a village hall, a park, a pub, a small church, a bus stop and a post box. The population at the 2011 Census was 313.
The Cricket on the Hearth: A Fairy Tale of Home is a novella by Charles Dickens, published by Bradbury and Evans, and released 20 December 1845 with illustrations by Daniel Maclise, John Leech, Richard Doyle, Clarkson Stanfield and Edwin Henry Landseer. Dickens began writing the book around 17 October 1845 and finished it by 1 December. Like all of Dickens's Christmas books, it was published in book form, not as a serial.
"The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger" (1927), one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is one of 12 stories in the cycle collected as The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes.
Monica Enid Dickens, MBE was an English writer, the great-granddaughter of Charles Dickens.
St Ippolyts is a village and civil parish on the southern edge of Hitchin in Hertfordshire, England. It has a population of approximately 2,000.
Offley is a civil parish in the English county of Hertfordshire, between Hitchin and Luton. The main village is Great Offley, and the parish also contains the nearby hamlets of Little Offley and The Flints. In the south-west of the parish, near Luton, there are the hamlets of Cockernhoe, Mangrove Green and Tea Green, and also the Putteridge Bury estate; these have LU2 postcodes and 01582 telephone numbers.
Joanne Froggatt is a British actress. From 2010 to 2015, she portrayed Anna Bates in the ITV period drama series Downton Abbey, for which she received three Emmy nominations and won the 2014 Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress. From 2017 to 2020, she starred as Laura Nielson in the ITV/Sundance drama series Liar.
Angel Pavement is a novel by J. B. Priestley, published in 1930 after the enormous success of The Good Companions (1929).
Fairfield Hospital in Fairfield, Bedfordshire, England was a psychiatric hospital from 1860 to 1999. It is a Grade II listed building.
Hitchin Rural District was a rural district in Hertfordshire, England from 1894 to 1974, covering an area in the north of the county.
Mary Angela Dickens was an English novelist and journalist of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras, and the oldest grandchild of the novelist Charles Dickens. She died on the 136th anniversary of her grandfather's birth.
Edward Chapman was a British publisher who, with William Hall founded Chapman & Hall, publishers for Charles Dickens, William Thackeray, Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Anthony Trollope, Eadweard Muybridge and Evelyn Waugh among others.
Frederic Chapman was a publisher of the Victorian era who became a partner in Chapman & Hall, who published the works of Charles Dickens and Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, among others.