Farewell Leicester Square

by Betty Miller

A novel by Jonathan Miller's mother about a young film director and his encounters with anti-Semitism in England between the wars. Preface by Jane Miller.

Genres: Fiction, Jewish, Classics, British Literature, London, Novels, Literary Fiction

309 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1941

About the author

Betty Miller (1910-65), was born in Ireland to a Lithuanian businessman and a Swedish teacher whose (Polish) family was distantly related to the philosopher Henri Bergson. She went to school in London and did a diploma in journalism at University College before publishing the first of her seven novels. In 1933 she married the psychiatrist Emanuel Miller (1892-1970) and then wrote two more well-received novels and Farewell Leicester Square (unpublished until 1941). During the war she lived in the country with her children, Jonathan (b.1934) and Sarah (b.1937), writing On the Side of the Angels (1945, repr. 1985) and a biography of Robert Browning (1952). Her London circle included Olivia Manning, Stevie Smith, Marghanita Laski and Isaiah Berlin – who remarked on her ‘moral charm’, calling her ‘gentle, acutely sensitive, receptive, infinitely truthful and accurate’.

Reviews

[BrokenTune · Rating 3 out of 5]

"He had a vision of the contemporary situation: country after country shutting its doors. Unlovely panic.... Comprehensible, though. The instinct of self-preservation.... He thought of what Catherine had said to him once: We are all guilty of hammering on the knuckles of those who try to climb into our boat.... That was what they were doing, those doctors, those lawyers who protested against the 'influx' of refugee doctors, lawyers.... What we want, he thought, is the Barnardo spirit in politics. The Ever-Open Door. No Really Destitute Person Ever Refused Admission.... But the morality which governs people in their private lives is not incumbent upon them as a nation. On the contrary. The policy is No Really Destitute Person Ever Granted Admission. The Ever-Bolted Door. At the same time he blamed no one. Unflinchingly honest with himself, he realized that he himself might well be equally indifferent if he were one of the fortunate; the secure..."

Written in 1935, Betty Miller was unable to get Farewell Leicester Square published until 1941. Even though her publisher Victor Gollancz had loved and quickly snapped up Miller's earlier works, Farewell Leicester Square was too controversial with its depiction of the hypocrisy and anti-semitism within the British middle-classes.

I must admit that the premise of the book and its importance as a record of zeitgeist and social attitudes is far more interesting than the story itself.

There is no pacey plot to talk of, no grand drama, no twists. Much of this book consists of descriptions of the mundane, often riddled with a lot of detail. For much of this book, I was really bored.

However, Miller shines at creating characters that have a compelling inner life, and her descriptions of the interaction between the main character and his wife, Alec and Catherine, and the people around them are fascinating because they are so well written. When Alec and Catherine, have an argument, the are no outbursts. The tension and frustration are built by subtlety in their conversations, and by a lot of inner monologue which unveils Alec's struggle with his identity as "the other" in a society that demands conformity. Catherine is no less interesting. In fact, I preferred reading about her thoughts in some way. She's the ally that is never really allowed to be a part of her cause. It's compelling stuff, especially at a time when allies were needed. Still are.

It's sad of course, that the underlying criticism that Miller voices in this book, is still a current issue - regardless of whether "the other" is applied to religious or cultural differences. But this also makes the book an interesting and timely read even though the book and its author have become rather obscure. I love finding these gems. And I adore Persephone Books for re-printing them.

[Ali · Rating 4 out of 5]

Betty Miller wrote ‘Farewell Leicester Square’ in 1935 but it was rejected at first no doubt due to the sensitive subject matter of anti-Semitism and the sense of disappointment which pervades the novel. The book final finally appeared in 1941. Betty Miller was a young wife and mother when she wrote ‘Farewell Leicester Square’ but she must have been aware on some level at least of what was happening in Germany at this time, and this novel must have been her response to the Jewish experience as she saw it in England.
In Farewell Leicester Square we meet Alec Berman, who succeeds in his ambitions to make it in the British film industry. The novel opens on premier night of Berman’s film ‘Farewell Leicester Square’ - a film which epitomises his work, and comes to be his greatest success. The story then returns briefly to Alec’s teenage years in Brighton, one of three siblings in a Jewish family that expects him to join his father in the family business. Alec’s father is disparaging of his ambitions – ultimately throwing down an ultimatum that results in Alec leaving Brighton for London – and not seeing his family for seventeen years.
Alec is ambitious and as a sixteen year old he contrives to meet Richard Nicolls owner of the Ladywell film company at the Nicolls home in Rottingdean. Their home and the life he glimpses there seems to represent for him the world from which he feels excluded, but which he longs to be a part of.
“Their gaze passed him over, up and down, idly; without interest or curiosity. Then they continued on their way as though nothing were. Walking together without speaking: at one in their natural intimacy. Moving with unconscious assurance of young animals under the sun. Alec looking after them as they went, felt down to the roots of his being the contrast which emerged between himself and them: and it was at that precise moment, for the first time, that something new, the sense of racial distinctness, awoke in him …. A sudden knowledge of the difference between these two, who could tread with careless assurance a land which was in every sense was theirs; and himself, who was destined to live always on the fringe to exist only in virtue of the toleration of others, with no birthright but that of toleration.”
Fourteen years later Alec is a success, and he finds himself married to Catherine, the daughter of Richard Nicolls. The marriage is over shadowed however by Alec’s over awareness of himself – he constantly examines other people’s attitude to him and his Jewishness – he suspects even his wife of looking down on him. Viewing himself continually as an outsider impacts upon Alec’s whole life, and his relationships. Alec’s preoccupation with how he is perceived begins to look a little like paranoia – as he begins to push away the only people who really don’t have any issue with his race.
This is the sort of novel which has people crying ..”but nothing much happens” – well nothing much does happen – the novel is an extremely good examination of middle class English life, ambition and the small almost invisible acts of anti-Semitism that exist there. There are some large gaps in the story of Alec and his career as a film maker – but in a sense that doesn’t matter – the story is much more about Alec Berman’s view of himself, and the way that in striving to make the sort of life he for himself that he has always wanted, he does in fact lose something of himself. Alec is not a character I always felt able to sympathise with, in a way he pushes the reader away in the same way he pushes his wife away.
Miller’s writing is excellent. She slyly exposes petty everyday racism that is of course in fact far from petty, it’s destructive; in Alec it breeds a kind of paranoia - which blights his life. Miller’s portrayal of both middle class English life and the suffocating limits of Alec’s family home in Brighton is brilliantly done.
“There are some things, he thought, which one would remember always. The smell of those rooms in Landsdowne Road. Coming in out of an unbounded night – the sea, hedged between green-sleeked breakwaters, surging with prolonged thunder upon the empty clattering stones; and the lights all along the front, blown, winking before the breathless night-riding winds – to find this immured warmth: solid, motionless. To stand, eyes dazzled, flesh still ringing from the exterior cold, before this quiet room, warm with the accumulated fires of winter and the intimate life and breath of human bodies, with gaze as bright and alien as that of some animal come momentarily out of another existence. And conscious of course, of his own voluntary isolation; of this new priggish desire of his to rupture the dull bondage of flesh making him one with these people.”
Such writing – in my opinion - deserves recognition, and I am glad Persephone books saw fit to re-issue it. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel – and although it won’t be my favourite Persephone novel – it is one I am very glad to have read and it certainly makes me want to read more of Betty Miller’s work.

[Kit · Rating 2 out of 5]

Says a lot about living in a marginalised identity, but I wasn't a fan of the writing style.

[Beth Bonini · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘Don’t you find that there are moments when it’s intolerable being a Jew?’ he said abruptly. ‘All these ridiculous, impossible complications on top of the normal complications of merely being alive . . . ‘

About halfway through this novel, protagonist Alec Berman - a successful film director in London - is having lunch with one of his old friends when a chance encounter with an anti-Semitic newspaper seller (’Clear out the Jews . . . England for the English!’) sparks off a conversation of rare honesty and bitterness. The two men, generally so genial and guarded, drop their usual bonhomie in order to rail against being endlessly persecuted for their Jewishness.

It’s rather chilling to read this novel looking backwards at what was coming. When Betty Miller wrote it, in 1935, it was rejected by her publisher Victor Gollancz - even though he had published her previous two novels. Perhaps the subject matter hit too close to home, perhaps he was just being overly sensitive to the ‘climate’ of the time. One can only speculate, as Jane Miller (author of the book’s Preface) does, but it’s a certainty that his rejection wasn’t due to the quality of the book. As Jane Miller also notes, the book is brilliant for portraying both the ‘silky, slippery presence of anti-semitism in England amongst precisely those people who would have admitted it’ and also the ‘self-hatred’ latent in those Jews who revere the English and their ostensibly tolerant culture. It seems worth noting that it was the only novel Betty Miller wrote in which she examined the issues of Jewish identity.

Alec Berman is exactly the sort of Jewish person who idealises the English - and makes an artistic living doing so - while at the same time being extraordinarily sensitive to any slights, both real and imagined. As a young man, he is given his first chance in the film industry by Richard Nicolls, who seems to him to be the epitome of everything naturally patrician and self-assured. Many years later, Alec marries Catherine, Richard Nicolls’ daughter. As a teenager, desperate to leave his father’s home and make his own way in the world, he glimpses Catherine and her brother Basil and he feels the ‘sense of racial distinctness’ awaken in him: ’A sudden knowledge of the difference between these two, who could tread with careless assurance a land which in every sense was theirs; and himself, who was destined to live always on the fringe: to exist only in virtue of the toleration of others, with no birthright but that toleration . . .’

In some ways, this is a sort of ‘rags to riches’ story not too dissimilar to the sort of films which were popular in the 1930s. However, the main character doesn’t really come from poverty, and Betty Miller is way too sophisticated and psychologically astute to write a novel that simplistic. I was interested to learn that Miller’s husband was a psychiatrist, because she is able to shift effortlessly between the inner and external aspects of Alec and Catherine and the complex interaction of what they say to each other, what they withhold, and what they are actually thinking. When Catherine’s friend Venitia probes her about her ‘mixed’ marriage, Catherine’s rebuttal is tartly accurate: ’As though every marriage weren’t mixed - fundamentally and of its very nature: as though that weren’t the whole meaning of marriage.’

As I read this book I frequently marvelled that Betty Miller was only 25 when she wrote it. She writes very sensitively about ageing and disappointment, and also the specific kind of fear that comes with ageing. Considering that she was still a recent wife, and new mother, her knowledge of marriage - its disappointments and accommodations - also seems astonishingly perceptive. This passage, for instance:

If he had had presented to him, at the outset, a picture of what his life was to be with Catherine (say what it was at this moment), he would have been, he knew, violently distressed. And yet, now that he was living it, that it had established itself slowly and therefore, it seemed, inevitably, it did not appear to him intolerable. On the contrary: it seemed to him that this was the natural order of things; the sort of reality every husband and wife had to face up to in the intimacy of their private lives . . . After all, he thought, the consciousness that a marriage is not what might be called a successful one, is actually quite intermittent. Even then, the sun does not shine less bright, nor food taste less well. The ordinary things of life, in fact, go on precisely as before: the small joys, the small interests which go to make up the major part of living get woven in and about the circumstances of marriage, so that, in time, the whole things comes to constitute the fabric of the normal, the accepted.

Community, family, identity, a sense of belonging: these are the themes, and sometimes they seem more like questions, at the heart of this novel. Although Betty Miller is examining Jewish experience, I think the emotional truths are translatable to any persons who have felt ostracised and marginalised because of some aspect of their identity.

[Rosemary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alec Berman grows up in Brighton in the 1920s and moves to London against the wishes of his father to work in the film industry. He becomes a successful director but is always plagued by the anti-Semitism that was rife in England at the time.

Betty Miller wrote this book in 1935 but couldn't get it published. Victor Gollancz, who was himself Jewish and had published her three previous novels, turned it down, presumably because of the content since there's not much else to object to in it - it's a well-written book and a compelling story. It was finally accepted by Robert Hale during the war, when feeling had changed: anti-Semitism was now seen as a feature of Nazi Germany and therefore a Bad Thing.

[Helen]

Although Betty Miller wrote this novel in 1935, it didn't find a publisher until 1941, having been rejected by her publisher, Victor Gollancz, for whom it seems the novel was - according to Neal Ascherson in The New York Times - 'an attack on the solid English assimilation of [Gollancz's] own family'.

The novel tells the story of Alec Berman, born into a Jewish family in Brighton, whose desire to enter the film-making profession angers his very traditional father. Berman further distances himself from his family by marrying Catherine Nicolls. Towards the end of the book there is an uneasy reconciliation between Alec and his father, who can't help asking, 'What did you want to marry a shicksa for? Aren't there plenty of nice Jewish girls?'

Despite his success as a film-maker, Alec is always aware of himself as an outsider - a feeling that inevitably drives a wedge between himself and Catherine. There is very little actual 'plot', but what the novel does offer is a finely-observed depiction of a 'mixed' marriage and the pressures brought to bear on such a marriage. Miller makes the reader uncomfortably aware that there is more to anti-semitism than the excesses of the Nazis (and their British equivalents), and is brilliant at evoking that sense of being 'different' and what that means on a day-to-day basis. Whenever he meets someone for the first time, for instance, Berman is aware that the person's opinion of him might change on learning that Alec is Jewish.

The novel is written in an episodic fashion that omits huge chunks of Berman's life. The reader never learns, for instance, exactly how he becomes successful in his chosen career. This is not really a criticism: the focus of the story is very much on the small daily incidents that impact on our lives in fundamental, and sometimes destructive, ways.

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was written in 1935 and the prescience of it makes you gulp. I am thinking of sending a copy to Mr Corbyn.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

I will definitely revisit this novel, but suspect its astute depiction of the experience of otherness (in this case being a 'lucky', a 'successful' British-born Jew in the thirties and forties “destined to live always on the fringe to exist only in virtue of the toleration of others, with no birthright but that toleration”) will continue to feel as relevant as it does right now — excruciatingly so, living in the fallout of the Brexit vote.

Betty Miller is that rare author who is as insightful and articulate about contradictory feelings as of conscious thoughts, and her acute sympathetic attention applies not only to the Jewish protagonist, but equally to his English wife; she paints an acute portrait of their relationship with brilliant passages of f.i.d. when we drift between the minds of both Alec and Catherine navigating the unsaids and too-easily-saids, the murky loyalties and betrayals of a mixed marriage.

My copy is bristling with bookmarks but I’ll limit myself to two quotations.
Alec, too-casual, on the subtleties of antisemitism:
“I can claim my little share. It’s more rarefied perhaps — but all the more invidious for that. One’s got a sort of sixth sense by now — always on the alert of attack. Not physical attack: but other things, things that cut away one’s self-respect — a smile — a silence…”

A rare outburst from Catherine, on the loss of her privileged ignorance:
“It’s not me who’s conscious of the difference between us, but him: he’s the one who keeps on insisting on it, keeping it alive, refusing to allow me to forget it…I’ve no patience with it! I hate the way he watches out, almost greedily, for a sign that I’m tired of the situation, that what he chooses to consider are my real feelings are beginning to show through…”

[Romily · Rating 3 out of 5]

In a series of filmic scenes we follow the progress of Alec Berman, a successful movie entrepreneur from a middle class Jewish family, as he follows his youthful dreams, against the opposition of his authoritarian father. Written in the late 1930's by Betty Miller, herself a child of Jewish parents, the novel is concerned, not with outright anti-semitism, but with the unspoken assumptions of those in British society who consider themselves liberal-minded. There is a sensitive examination of the effect this can have on an individual's self-worth: the feelings of not quite belonging, which can be replicated in minority communities today.
This is very much a novel of ideas and deserves to be read for its examination of social attitudes which are still very relevant. Alec's perception of being an outsider becomes so ingrained that it drives a wedge in his relationships. The author praises him for trying to break the mould, unlike his family who remain in their close-knit community. He attains the strength at the end of his travails to face a future free of his own desires and apprehensions.

[Proustitute (on hiatus)]

"Two of Miller's works, Farewell Leicester Square (1941), about anti-Semitism in London, and On the Side of the Angels (1945), about gender relations in wartime, have been reprinted—the former by Persephone, the latter by Capuchin (and by Virago in the 1980s)—and both are lovely and well worth reading. Unfortunately, these two other novels—A Room in Regent's Park (1942) and The Death of the Nightingale (1948)—published around the same time have not been so lucky and are out of circulation in U.S. libraries and virtually impossible to find for sale."

- adapted from here (along with a list of other buried WWII-era female novelists in Britain)

[Malaferla · Rating 4 out of 5]

Halfway through I would have given this book at best a Three, and maybe a Two. But the author so accurately traces her characters' thoughts and emotions in the second half, that I am pleased to rank it as a Four.

[Debbie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The style of this novel is very 1930's, but the topic of being an outsider in Britain is always topical. This being set just before the second world war is about Jews and the overt, and for the well connected Jews, convert discrimination.

[Ann-Marie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Persephone No. 14! Alas, my least favorite to date.

[Antoinette · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was my first Persephone book, and it was fantastic! I enjoyed it so much, and it was a book I didn't expect to devour but I did.

[Jeremy Silverman · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel follows Alec Berman, who rebels against his more traditional Jewish family by turning his back on his rigid patriarchal father in pursuit of a career in the movies. In 1930s England (when it was written, but first published in 1944), he marries Catherine Nicolls, the daughter of his rich gentile aristocratic movie mogul mentor.

Ultimately, the book is about their mixed-marriage and, despite good intentions from both, the difficulties that ensue. At its core it is a depiction of British upper-class anti-semitism, and how it destroys an even loving relationship. Alec has become a highly successful movie director, and the marriage survives the snipes and sniggers from Catherine’s friends and family. Alec’s active radar system, always ready to detect anti-semitism, can be at times a strain on their relationship, but not a severing one. Each loves the other but finally when their young child is subjected to the jibes of anti-Semitic sneers by his peers the center cannot hold.

This novel was a little disappointing for me. While both the setting and time period are interesting to me, and the subject is a worthy one, the stakes as given in the novel aren’t especially high. (Perhaps it was unfortunate that I read this within weeks of reading Crooked Cross. That book was also recently re-discovered and re-issued by Persephone Press, also written by a British woman, SallyCarson, writing in the 1930s, and also about the issues in a love relationship between a Jewish man and a gentile woman. Rather than taking place in England, however, the setting was Nazi Germany where the stakes were much higher.) More of an issue was that the characters, including Alec, never really came fully alive for me.

However, among the many pleasures of reading novels is coming across language that captures feelings or situations that, in life, are often experienced without direct notice. Especially when put in the context of a story, giving words to these feelings can provide a sense of recognition and fill in aspects of ourselves that otherwise might well remain a formless blur if not wholly overlooked. Well, on the positive side, this novel offered quite a few those moments.

[Sasha · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

[Marie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alec Berman's journey of passive aggressiveness and self- loathing begins and ends in Brighton. Flowery prose gives this novel an oddly detached dream like quality. None of the characters are especially pleasant, especially our hero Alec.

[Felicity · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sadly, I found the film-industry setting tedious - indeed, if this had been a film I'd probably have walked out before the end. The topic of anti-semitism has been far better handled in numerous pre- and postwar German novels

[Jane Eddy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Riveting tale about the influence of anti-Semitism in 1930s London. War is on the horizon and xenophobia on the rise. A subtle treatment of the bias on a successful movie maker.

[Tessa Page · Rating 4 out of 5]

Prescient about anti-antisemitism. Not a lot happens, but very enjoyable.

[JimZ · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am glad I read this book and it had some thought-provoking sections for me. It is a strong three stars but I can’t go any higher. It was either a 4- or 5-star book for me for Part One but there were two more long parts and those at times dragged on and on.

It is about a mixed marriage, between a Jew and a non-Jew (I guess she was Christian...that is not clear but I assume that was so because she was like “everybody else” in England at that time). The book takes us back before the marriage and introduces us to Alec Berman as a teenage living in a Jewish neighborhood in a town in England. His father runs a small store and wants Alec to work in the store, But Alec has dreams of becoming a movie producer. His father gets angry when Alec leaves to go to London in pursuit of his dream, and tells him not to come back begging to live with his family again after he fails. But Alec does not fail - he makes it big and becomes a movie producer. But despite having made it and being well off, he is constantly aware and bothered how people tend to treat him differently, because he is a Jew. Being treated differently more often than not in subtle ways, but it’s always there to sensitive Alec. He eventually becomes enamored with a young woman, Cathy, and there is a weird scene in which he says to her that he wanted to propose marriage to her but he wouldn’t because she wouldn’t marry a Jew and it seems just to prove him wrong and to prove she does not have a prejudiced bone in her body Cathy marries him. Not a good reason to marry somebody I would think. And the reason why she breaks up with him, wants to separate from the marriage some seven years later, is weird and not explained too well. They have a young boy and he got in a fight at school because somebody taunted him and called him a Jew. Cathy is horrified and she ends up living with her brother, Basil, who she used to be very close with before she married Alec...he is oh-so-subtle an antisemitic and has never liked Alec because he is a Jew. She knows that deep down, and tells her brother after she marries Alec and has a child with him that she is tired of Alec’s concern that many people are antisemitic, and god knows she is not an antisemitic but she is sick of living with Alec and having to listen to his concerns that people have it out for Jews. Well, she told the wrong person that, because her antisemitic brother says “you know you and your son can live with me if you want to leave Alec”. And so eventually she does...she tells Alec in a letter that the reason for wanting to separate from him is she doesn’t want to put her son through more harm. So she leaves a marriage so her son doesn’t have to be called a Jew?
Betty Miller wrote this and submitted it to the publisher, Victor Gollancz, in 1935...he had already accepted two of her books and so she was surprised when it was rejected. Jane Miller, in her introduction of this book, said “its rejection...was a predictable if upsetting response to its subject matter”. She submitted it 6 years later to the publisher, Robert Hale, and it got published that year (1941), at a time Jews were being systematically slaughtered in the concentration camps and crematoriums of Germany.

Reviews
• http://agirlwalksintoabookstore.blogs...
• https://bookssnob.wordpress.com/2012/...
• https://heavenali.wordpress.com/2013/...

Notes:
• In searching for reviews of the book, I found this and it made me laugh and I imagine you are in the same boat! ... “More likely it’s because my TBR pile grows like kudzu: what once saw the light of day is soon overgrown by the new arrivals that shawl out of the ground like vast clouds of gnats.: https://eigermonchjungfrau.blog/2018/...
• I had read her later work, On the Side of the Angels (1945), and liked it a lot. Sadly, several of her other books are not available, in part because her earlier works (pre-World War II) may have been destroyed in a huge fire in a warehouse that held many of Victor Gollancz’s books that had not been sold (i.e., were not best-sellers and which they had a number of books left, among them hers).

[Austen to Zafón · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written in 1935, this novel was not published until 1941 because it centered around a "mixed" marriage between a Jewish man, Alec, and a non-Jewish woman, and portrayed the casual and frequent antisemitism Alec suffered.

I was engrossed by Betty Miller's writing, especially her fresh and often unexpected metaphors and similes. She is also good at portraying the inner lives of her characters and I was surprised at how modern and natural the dialogue is.

I read several reviews that said the book wasn't fast-paced enough. I think that's what I liked about the novel; so much tiny detail not just about being Jewish (which the author was), but about the movie business and relationship dynamics. I particularly enjoyed the details about Alec's boyhood in Brighton and Rottingdean, and his dreams of being a film director.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't know why I always think Persephone titles are going to be lightweight because they almost never are. This is a engrossing novel about anti-Semitism in England between the two wars and a Jewish man who leaves Brighton to become a film director. It's about assimilation, self-hatred, and a kind of innate sense of not-belonging that many minorities have. I found the writing kind of wooly sometimes but the story really captivated me.

[Jack Smyth · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love Persophone books. I attended the Persophone festival in 2024. But this is my least favourite one of the collection. Boring, most of the time. Characters don’t seem believable and I don’t feel any draw to any of them.

[Tommie · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting examination of assimilations, and the limits thereof in British society, but focused on a not very interesting character and therefore rather too slow moving.