Bright Summer - Dark Autumn by Robert Barltrop (Waltham Forest Libraries and Arts Department 1986)

And, in the height of the summer, the 'red' air-raid warnings began in the daytimes. There was a siren on the island in the road junction near us, at the top of a very tall grey post. At the shop we heard the deep metallic growl as it started up, rising to the harsh wail which went on for a couple of minutes. People scurried away, and the shops closed; the streets were nearly empty by the time the siren finished sounding. Nothing happened. As a reminder that it was not a meaningless warning, bombs were dropped on Croydon and killed sixty-two people. Sometimes on cloudy days when the warning was on we would hear the throbbing of an aeroplane engine, hidden and persistent as if hovering not far away.

Yet, in this threatened state, normal activities and recreations went on. On their afternoons off the shop assistants were going to the West End to see Gone With the Wind (they said it was too long - we were used to films which lasted an hour and a half). The dance bands and comedy shows on the radio: Jack Warner playing the Cockney soldier in 'Garrison Theatre', Robb Wilton, 'Itma' with its fund of catchphrases; Bing Crosby, the Andrews Sisters singing 'Bei Mir Bist du Schoen'. Pubs flourished, as did dance halls. There was said to be a boom in reading the classics of English literature, and I suppose the black-out nights were an opportunity which many people had previously lacked for reading. The book I remember from those weeks before the Blitz was a paperback novel called This Bright Summer. Several of my friends were reading it; it was well written, and passionate in places, and in my mind it belongs to the summer of 1940.

The Beiderbecke Tapes by Alan Plater (Mandarin 1986)

Whenever Jill felt the need to recharge her campaigning batteries, she sought out Sylvia. Like many such friendships, it had started on the Aldermaston road, a road that had doubled for Damascus in many people's lives.

They loved to talk about the great heroines, yes, and about the occasional hero too, of their own and earlier times: trading tales of Red Emma Goldman, Annie Besant, Sylvia Pankhurst, the one member of the family who never deviated and whose name Sylvia herself had inherited. On seeing any hostile element, Sylvia would cry out 'No Pasarán' - the famous Republican slogan from the Spanish Civil War, coined by a woman, and translated meaning: 'They shall not pass.' They very rarely did. Sylvia was no phoney. She had gone to Spain in the 1930s and had paid her dues.

Her view of the world was clear-cut: people were marvellous and politicians were shit. Asked for evidence she would say: read a history book. In her younger days, when her activities were more public and noisy, and she occasionally went to prison, the newspapers frequently claimed she was in the pay of Moscow.

'Alas,' she said, ' would that it were so.'

She had written to the Kremlin several times, suggesting that they might slip her the odd bar of gold, if only to add substance to the allegations, and ease her later years; nothing ever arrived - not even a nominal kopek. She suspected her mistake was to add a regular PS about sending dissidents to mental institutions. 

Under Contract by Liza Cody (Charles Scribner's Sons 1986)

"Think of the overtime. I dunno," Anna sighed, "why does everyone slag everyone off so much? I've never come across such a slagging match."

"You've never been security on one of these tours before, have you?" Dave looked down his nose at her. "You'll learn. It's because there's a lot of vultures on only the one carcass - not enough to go round and everyone's hungry."

There was some truth in that, she mused on her reluctant way back to the dressing rooms. Only who were the vultures and what was the carcass? Fame and fortune was the simple answer. But what about Shona who had achieved it? She had stood in front of thousands of screaming, applauding fans and yet she still needed Anna's few distracted words. And now the fans themselves needed to be noticed. Look at me, look at me, no - look at me, seemed to be the cry in every throat. I could look like that if I had the right make-up . . . I could do that, if only someone'd notice me. Fame and fortune were only by-products in the universal need to be seen.

The Mind and Body Shop by Frank Parkin (Atheneum 1986)

Hedda Hagstrom picked up a soggy black banana and flung it angrily across the room. It landed with a soft smack at the feet of Herbert Spencer who picked it up, sniffed it, and tossed it back.

'The whole experiment is completely ruined,' she shouted. 'Six weeks' work and thousands of pounds down the drain.' She paced about the room like a caged animal. Darwin and Huxley cowered together in the corner as far from her wrath as possible.

'It was just to break the monotony,' Baxi said defensively. 'Everyone was fed up with playing the same old game, especially with Herbert Spencer winning all the time.'

The unblemished skin on Hedda Hagstrom's face tightened visibly over the fine bone structure beneath. 'It was not merely an innocent variation on the rules of play,' she hissed. 'It was a deliberate subversion of their basic principles.' She pointed to the video camera above the door. 'I've been studying the tapes. They show that you openly encouraged Darwin to requisition all Herbert Spencer's hotels without compensation. You also made everyone pay Capital Gains Tax whenever they passed Go. And, what's more, you taught them all to respect squatters' rights.' SDhe flung her arms in the air in a gesture of incredulity. 'On top of everything, you even connived in Huxley's attempt to escape from Gaol.'

Baxi traced a circle in the damp straw with his redundant walking stick. Bits of straw were intertwined in his shoulder-length hair, the result of darwin's effort to make him look more presentable. Darwin now shuffled across and put a comforting arm around his waist.

'Worst of all, ' continued Hedda Hagstrom shrilly, 'you let them nationalize the railways and the bank. You've totally corrupted the. They're now sharing out their bananas on an egalitarian basis. Even Herbert Spencer's doing it.' Her pale blue eyes became two metallic points. You've failed Psychology 301. I'm giving you gamma triple minus, the lowest mark you can get. That means you can't retake the course unless you agree to become a Friend of the University.'

Baxi contemplated the holes in his shoes. Friends of the University had to endow a Chair or give their organs to the Medical School whenever they were needed. e took off his waterproof apron and handed it to Huxley who liked to use it as a hammock.

'You're a disgrace to Experimental Psychology, Mr Baxi. I never want to see you in or near my lab again. Is that understood?' She snatched the Maoist paper hat off Herbert Spencer's head, screwed it in a ball, and threw it at the Monopoly board. It struck one of the coloured matchboxes which had been painted to represent council flates placed on Mayfair and Park Lane. Matchstick pickets had been placed around the Gas Company and a sign on the Community Chest indicated that it had now been converted into a hardship fund for hotel kitchen staff. Hedda Hagstrom planted her feet on either side of the board as though about to trample it. 'What am I supposed to tell the Employers' Federation? she cried out in despair. 'That they've spent a small fortune to be told that even the apes are in favour of the peaceful transition from capitalism to socialism?'

Death By Analysis by Gillian Slovo (The Women's Press Crime 1986)

Sam gave a long sigh. He put his face in his hands and groaned.

'Nothing happened. Absolutely nothing. Unless you count the fact that one of my students asked me a penetrating question about the foliation of space which took me all of thirteen minutes to answer. I got five circulars, two of them identical and I had an argument in the canteen with a Spartacist while eating a soya-bean casserole.'

'You're in a bad way,' I said. 'Arguing with a Spart.'

'Yeah, well he tried to tell me that soya was a sop thrown at the working class to divert it from the struggle.'

'So how was it?'

The soya? Terrible. If that's a sop, then I think we're saved. Anyway, what time are we leaving?'

Red Hill: A Mining Community by Tony Parker (Coronet Books 1986)

- He says it'll burn me up in flames one day, my husband does, me and my blazing hate. He says it can't be kept up for ever, you've got to forgive and forget. I'll never forget, that's one thing that's sure: and I'll never forgive neither, at least I can't see myself doing. The Coal Board's turned my husband, who all his life's been an honest upright working man, into a criminal. They've made him someone with a conviction, and a criminal record for it. And as well as that they've made him into someone who because of it'll never again in his whole life get a decent job. He did nothing wrong in the first place: but they won't relent and give him his job back. So neither will I relent either. Those people, the Coal Board, Ian MacGregor, Maggie Thatcher, the Tories - I hate every one of them and I'll hate them till my dying day for what they've done to my husband. He can forgive them if he likes, and if he does he's a better person and a better Christian than I am. To me they're the biggest bastards who ever walked the face of the earth, and every morning when I get up I curse them and I curse them every night when I go to bed.

(from 'Me and my blazing hate')

Character Parts by John Mortimer (Penguin Books 1986)

'But there was no election for leader. It was all done by word of mouth?'

'Word of mouth. Yes. All sorts of strange things were happening. Ted Heath went up to Scotland and for the first time in his life he shot a stag! Can you imagine that?' Lord Hailsham was laughing again. 'I think Ted Heath was Warwick the Kingmaker.'

'Was it all a great disappointment to you?'

'Not at all! I was just not selected. It must have been much worse for Ted Heath, To be chosen and then de-stooled. In the presence of the tribe! To be de-stooled.' His lips pursed in a long and hilarious double 'o'. 'What a terrible humiliation.'

'Besides which I've known all the recent Prime Ministers and not one of them died happy in his bed. Except Macmillan. Yes. I think he'll die quite happy.'

'Is Macmillan a wonderful actor in the House of Lords?'

Of course. The old boy's a superb performer. But when he was Prime Minister he was always rather piano. Rather quiet and understated. And you know why? The best of his generation was killed in the 1914 war. And he could see their ghosts looking down at him from an imaginary gallery, all saying, "Look down there. It's little Harold! They've made him Prime Minister, and we were cleverer than him." That made Macmillan rather quiet.'