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Posted: Sun May 25, 2008 5:21 pm
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| The Times
10 November 1982 Rachel Cullen Bubbling with Ideas Escapist fiction for women these days is big business, ranging all the way from mawkish romance to torrid romance, but when life becomes harrowing I fly to the warm comfort of the Chalet School. Eleanor [sic] M. Brent-Dyer invented in 1926 this predictable, privileged world of a girls' boarding school in Austria; the school survived at least into the 1960s having fled Hitler and returned after the war to Switzerland, but the best books are the early ones. Girls from the central European aristocracy join the Guides with English lasses called Nancy, Peggy and Joan while mistresses with nicknames like Bill and Charlie worry endlessly lest the girls overtire themselves. Maria's father is a count and Elisaveta's is a king, but they try jolly hard to be British on the cricket pitch. My escapism comes with lavender-water and more than a touch of class. |
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