Why the 1920s?
That’s the most common question I’m asked by readers. Why did you set your Lady Swift historical mystery series in 1920s Britain?
If you don’t know the series, Lady Eleanor Swift is brought up abroad by Bohemian parents until one night when she’s nine, they mysteriously disappear. Many years later she returns to England on inheriting her uncle’s country estate. While failing spectacularly acting the orthodox Lady of the Manor, she becomes involved in a string of local murders which she solves with the help of her inscrutable butler, Clifford. Oh, and there might be a rather lazy, but wilful, bulldog called Gladstone in there somewhere.
So, back to the question: what influenced me to set the series in 1920’s Britain? And no, it wasn’t Downton Abbey.
The answer is because I live in an area that’s never moved on from the 1920s in five, very unique ways.
1. The cuisine. The Lady Swift books are full of descriptions of food. Food was important to the rich and titled in 1920s Britain. Entertaining was essential and they often employed French chefs in the big houses and ate vast meals with scant regard for healthy eating. And they still eat as if it’s the 1900s here. The local transport cafe actually serves Bacon Badger Pie, a traditional Buckinghamshire recipe consisting mostly of beef suet and lard. And more lard.
2. The sport. Sure they play football and cricket (both very 1900’s pastimes) here, but you’re more likely to find them playing polo. And playing polo on the grounds of a country estate. Until I moved here, I thought only the royal family and Argentineans played polo. ‘Fancy another round of chukkas, old chap’ as Lord Langham would say.
3. The Manor Houses. If you thought all the Lords of the Manor disappeared after the war, you were wrong. They’re alive and well here. In fact, most of the local village is owned by one. And if they’re not playing polo, they’re shooting anything that moves. Shooting was huge at country house weekends in the 1900s, and the biggest shoot ever was just down the road from here when they shot 3,937 pheasants in one day! Even King George V who was part of the shooting party remarked: “perhaps we overdid it today.”
4. The villages. My local village looks almost exactly as it did in a photograph from the 1920s. Most of the houses and shops are the same, only the cars are different. Almost the whole village is still painted in the colours of the local Manor House. After all, the Lord of the Manor still owns most of the village.
5. The language. Lady Swift’s staff in Mystery by the Sea and the other books in the series, often lapse into the local dialect. This leaves Lady Swift, who’s not from those parts, utterly nonplussed until her butler, Clifford, translates for her. However, the dialect I use in the books is a far cry from the dialect you’ll hear around here. I have to simplify it or my editor complains no one will understand it. Here are some examples (thanks to ‘Words of Wing’):
‘E stoddled two rows a teirters.’
‘They backhouse wore alive wi emmuts’
‘Is trousers chaffed is stroddle’
Any ideas? Here’s a translation:
‘He straddles two rows of potatoes’
‘The kitchen was alive with ants’
‘His trousers chafed his crotch’
The old writing advice tells you to write what you know. And living in a splendidly backward (or retro) part of Britain that never moved on from polo and good old-fashioned British cuisine, means I’m stuck writing 1920s historical mysteries until I up and move to somewhere more modern.
But, golly, will I miss Bacon badger Pie!
Verity Bright is the pseudonym for a husband-and-wife writing partnership that has spanned a quarter of a century. Starting out writing high-end travel articles and books, they published everything from self-improvement to humour, before embarking on their first historical mystery. They are the authors of the fabulous Lady Eleanor Swift Mystery series, set in the 1920s.
