Miss Ranskill Comes Home

by Barbara Euphan Todd

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AFTERWORD BY WENDY POLLARD
336pp
ISBN 9781903155363

This funny, touching and highly original 1946 novel, by the author of the Worzel Gummidge books, is about a woman who goes on a cruise and is swept overboard; she lives for three years on a desert island before being rescued by a destroyer in 1943. Miss Nona Ranskill returns home to a world radically changed by the outbreak of the Second World War and it seems to her that England has gone mad: she cannot buy clothes without 'coupons', her friends are only interested in 'war work', and yet she is considered uncivilised if she walks barefoot or is late for meals.

With echoes of life during the Covid lockdowns when the norms and rituals of everyday life changed almost overnight, Miss Ranskill is shocked and confused by the impossibility of buying stockings, or bananas, or hair-grips and by the talk of Objectors, and conchies, and Quislings and Nasties and the ATS, and the WAAF and ARP. ‘Even the language was secret from her, full of strange words and alphabetical sequences.’

When a rumour breaks out that Miss Ranskill is a Germany spy and the police are on her trail, Barbara Euphan Todd treats it with such a light touch that very quickly it is not Nona we worry for, but everyone else, seen through her ‘innocent’ eyes, behaving in ways that defy common sense and to an outside observer border on madness. The description of her bossy old-school-friend, Marjorie, leading her team in ‘extinguishing an incendiary bomb’ in the greenhouse, with a stirrup-pump is gloriously funny. And yet the writing demonstrates a strong sense of morality and the main focus of Barbara Euphan Todd's satire is people behaving heroically and appallingly at one and the same time.

The writer Rosamond Lehmann considered Miss Ranskill Comes Home 'a work of great originality, and delightfully readable, a blend of fantasy, satire and romantic comedy... a very entertaining novel and less light than it seems.’ And Lehmann was not alone in her admiration: the Manchester Guardian called it ‘a witty first novel which besides being continuously entertaining displays a fine appreciation of life’s values’, whilst the New York Times praised the blend of ‘reality and fantasy, irony and pity… touchingly persuasive and real’. Meanwhile the Saturday Evening Post described it as ‘one of the finest stories we have read in a long time’.

The first three pages of Miss Ranskill Comes Home take an unusual tone, akin to a fantasy novel, which may be one reason why it was neglected for so many years, but it then quickly becomes a light, charming and thought-provoking read that is also very interesting about the plight of single women in this period. This has been an especial Persephone favourite.

Also available as a Persephone eBook.

For more on Miss Ranskill Comes Home, have a look at the Persephone Perspective.

Endpaper

The endpaper is 'Sutherland Rose', a 1946 screen-printed cotton textured fabric designed by Graham Sutherland for Helios.

Picture Caption

WWII poster by Fougasse

Read What Readers Say

Jane via Goodreads

This fine novel did not in any way go in the direction that I thought. It is deep and thoughtful, moving and plausible in a way hard to explain. Characters ring true and surprise, disappoint, and delight the reader much as they do in life. This is one that you know you'll re-read at some point.

NG via Instagram

I knew I would like what sounded like a charming, whimsical tale from the blurb, but did not expect to delight in the writing as much as the story.

Marcella and Her Books

Let me start by saying this book feels incredibly modern. It was first published in 1946 and would have been a contemporary story at the time. But it could just as well be historical fiction written now. I was expecting a cosy perhaps even whimsical book and I was surprised by how deeply reflective it was, and how it provides a social commentary on Britain at the time. Miss Ranskill had spent many a time fantasising about her return to England, but when finally she does, she finds herself lost in a place where rationing, coupon books, black-outs and drills are now the order of the day. She finds it hard to fit in in a society that is on the one hand suffering terrible losses and destruction and on the other hand uses very rigid rules and is fixated on trivial norms. Having been away, she questions and critiques the new way of living in Britain and thus finds herself misunderstood by her family, feeling a stranger in her own country and even longing to be back on the island, where things were hard, but made sense. She longs to share her grief, and her traumatic experience of being stranded on a desert island, but finds no one quite understands what she has been through. I think everyone who has ever been away from home for an extended period of time will recognise the alienating feeling of returning to a place that should feel familiar and comforting but isn’t.

Kavan via Goodreads

Compulsively readable and consistently fascinating.

Categories: Single Women Social Comedy WWII