Monica Kendall

'An extraordinary, intriguing and wonderfully idiosyncratic work'Flora spotted a large handwritten sign perched against a shrub with two long arrows. Above the left arrow was written 'BRIDGE', above the other arrow was, in smaller capital letters, 'ABSOLUTELY NOTHING'. Set largely in 1970s Oxford and USA, Make me thy lyre is a Bildungsroman with humour, Shakespeare, art, poetry, death and loss. It is framed by a prologue and epilogue set fifty years later. Flora is an only child from suburban north London. At Oxford University she reads Arabic and plays Rosaline and Beatrice. Initially lonely, she discovers boys and friendship, but tragedy strikes. A bridge connects us to the living; can it connect us to the dead? The past matters.'There are so many things I love about this. The energy and drive and passion, and the vivid recreation and recording of a past so deeply meaningful to Flora. What do I especially love? The way Monica Kendall has woven Shakespeare into the fabric of so many moments and epiphanies/realisations - my god, he really was a genius, wasn't he?' -- Nigel Bryant, translator of Raoul de Houdenc

'Do you like the truth? It is well for you. Adhere to that preference - never swerve thence.' - Charlotte Brontë, 'Shirley' The Jenkins family knew the Brontës in Brussels and West Yorkshire. Eager to learn about them, their descendant read the Brontë biographies, and discovered that no one had researched this family, and, worse, that what was written was fabricated, with one biographer copying another, embroidering, even making up dialogue. Yet Mrs Gaskell had deliberately sought out Mrs Jenkins when researching her famous Life of Charlotte. If it had not been for Mrs Jenkins, Charlotte would never have gone to Brussels, never met M. Heger. There would be no 'Villette', no 'Jane Eyre'. This book purges the lies and identifies one of Charlotte's characters for the first time. It reveals a thrumming wire that connects Byron to Trollope to Henry James, and gives further evidence of the adultery of William Wordsworth's eldest son. Above all, it gives a radical new perspective on the inspiration for Charlotte's novels and those vital two years she spent in Brussels.

In August 1914, thirteen-year-old Amy was trapped on the Belgian seacoast as war was declared with Germany, alone with her younger brothers. British, resilient and feisty, she got back to occupied Brussels and began her war diaries. Amy knew Nurse Cavell and Ada Bodart, members of the secret network to get Allied soldiers across the frontier. She writes of zeppelins, food shortages, constant gunfire and spies. She confronts a 'sneering' German who demands to know where her brother is: 'I could have shot him, ' she comments. Then it all changes: in 1917 her mother attacks her and Amy is moved to a Catholic boarding school nearby. Constantly in trouble for being disruptive, answering back, whistling, laughing in church and climbing onto roofs 'for fun', she longs for the love and approval of her teacher - and her estranged mother.

Classic drama from Longman Literature