Here Be Dragons

by Stella Gibbons

In the years after World War Two, Nell Sely, child of the forgotten generation, wanders blind through 1950s bohemian London, smoke-filled jazz clubs and bittersweet coffee bars in search of romantic idyll, delving into the dark backstreets of squalid yet splendid London.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, British Literature, 20th Century, Modern Classics, London, Literary Fiction

384 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1956

About the author

Stella Dorothea Gibbons was an English novelist, journalist, poet and short-story writer.

Her first novel, Cold Comfort Farm, won the Femina Vie Heureuse Prize for 1933. A satire and parody of the pessimistic ruralism of Thomas Hardy, his followers and especially Precious Bain by Mary Webb -the "loam and lovechild" genre, as some called it, Cold Comfort Farm introduces a self-confident young woman, quite self-consciously modern, pragmatic and optimistic, into the grim, fate-bound and dark rural scene those novelists tended to portray.

Reviews

[Hilary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another great Stella Gibbons. I really enjoyed the characters, we have all known a John ! Finished the book knowing that Nell would achieve her dreams and enjoy her life.

[Jana · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fantastic book to read on a journey, or during a long rainy weekend, when you can dive into it and enjoy every detail.

The setting (1950s London) is absolutely alive and in a couple of sentences I felt that I was part of it; I could see the lights on the canal, the squalid flats, Gardis' unkempt jumpers. The characters are a delight, even the nasty nasty ones, and the dialogue is witty and sharp. My favourite thing, all in all, is Nell Sely herself. She's not only a fantastic protagonist, who needs to learn and build her own corner of the world while still being practical and a solid relief among all that sea of artistic coffee drinkers, but she's also someone I'd love to be friends with.

I'm not quite sure about the whole of the plot itself, and I felt a bit unsatisfied with the rushed ending. Still, it did give us Georges, whose description as an "adolescent chicken" I will cherish forever. I would have loved to have some more Gardis, though.

[Fiona MacDonald · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really, really enjoyed the first half of the story and flew through it. But then something seemed to happen for the last 150 pages or so and I found it incredibly dull and flat; like two different authors had written the book. It was a bit of a pain to get to the end and really didn’t need to be as long as it was. The last few pages in particular where downright stupid. Also, if that wasn’t enough, the character of ‘John’ made me want to through the book out of a tower block window; what a massively unlikeable, sanctimonious and narcissistic prat and Nell should’ve known better than to associate with him at all. Sigh.

[Beth Bonini · Rating 3 out of 5]

The idea burst upon her without warning. At one moment she was a girl with no aim in life; counting pennies at the end of a day’s work which she must keep concealed from her parents because it was ‘not the kind of thing’ educated girls did; living rent-free in her aunt’s house, wearing shabby clothes, perpetually hungry because she had to lunch every day off a bar of chocolate or a fourpenny roll; worried about her parents’ future; not knowing what she wanted from life; and given to bad attacks of loneliness about which she alone knew. The next moment she was a girl with a definite and sensible ambition in life, one which she could work for; ladies do run tea-rooms; parents and aunts could even approve.

This extract from the novel serves as a good introduction for the protagonist Nell: 20 years old, from a shabby-genteel family, and loathe to work in a dull secretarial job or settle down to marriage. The setting is 1950s Hampstead, and London is full of dusty bed-sits, thick choking fogs, bad food and a general threadbareness. Nell needs money, badly, and when she hears that waitresses can earn more than secretaries, she becomes a waitress in a Hampstead tea room called The Primula. She discovers that she likes working hard; she also discovers that it is possible to cross the seemingly uncrossable social lines that she grew up with.

Nell sometimes seems more like a foil than a proper protagonist; her function in the story seems to be to serve as a contrast for all of the other ‘bohemian’ youth around her, chiefly her younger cousin John. John is a ‘writer’, supposedly brilliant - certainly in his own estimation - who spends his days wandering around London, cadging food off friends and old ladies, hanging out with his artistic crowd at coffee bars, and otherwise living a seemingly aimless life. His friends are background to the novel, and sometimes provide small points of dramatic interest, but are mostly inconsequential. They seem to exist primarily in order to provide ‘atmosphere’ - they are the new post-war youth of the country. (Some examples of the old pre-war youth exist, too, chiefly Nell’s debutante school friend Elizabeth Prideaux.). John is selfish and irresponsible, but he seems to inspire conflicted love in Nell’s heart. Their on-and-off again relationship is one of the narrative threads, but John is an annoying character from start to finish.

The book is strong on atmosphere, but weak on pretty much everything else. I couldn’t entirely engage with it, which surprised me, as I generally enjoy Gibbons’ writing and was eager to read one of her novels with a Hampstead setting. I’ve always romanticised ‘bohemia’, but it’s obvious that Gibbons did not. After reading her book, I’m not sure that I do, either. It mostly seems fairly pointless, pretentious, alcoholic and grubby.

[Mary Durrant · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful book beautifully written.
Nell and her family move to Hampstead Heath to live in an Aunts home after her father loses his faith.
Nell so didn't like working in an office and went instead to waitress in a tea shop.
Her cousin John appears with his mix of friends.
So of it's time but a lovely read which I found so hard to put down.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Synopsis:
Here Be Dragons was written by Stella Gibbons and published in 1956. This novel follows a young woman named Nell who moves to London with her parents when her father, a vicar, loses his faith and leaves the church ( very reminiscent of North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell!). She learns to strike out on her own and find her independence through working as a waitress in a tea shop. Through her cousin John she becomes introduced to a bohemian crowd.

Storyline:
This was a great coming of age story to get sucked into. London in the 50’s and the youths living the bohemian lifestyle came to life so vividly. There was no major plot point, just Nell coming into contact with a different lifestyle and different people than she’s used to. She learns to love working. She accepts, but also judges the irresponsible bohemian crowd. She’s in love with John, but doesn’t try to let herself get sucked into it so much. She knows she has feelings, but she also can see that he is rather selfish, manipulative and devoid of responsibility and she respects herself by not letting herself really get swept up in it. Not a choice most people would make, but one that makes the reader respect her. The book often follows the other characters perspective’s as well, giving a well rounded portrait of these different types of people living in London at the time. It’s sympathetically perceptive, yet also wry and witty.

Setting:
Here Be Dragons is set in London in the 1950’s. A good deal of the novel is set particularly in Hampstead. The setting of the time and place was so vivid and I really enjoyed it. The characters even went to come historical places that were fun to look up and get a greater feel for.

Characters:
The characters were all done so well. There was in depth character study, which I wasn’t expecting. Nell was a character I admired and felt for even though she is vastly different from myself. She is so sensible and practical. Such a helpful person as well. She allows herself to give to others without losing her self-respect. She is also hardworking and when she has a dream that makes sense she makes it happen. She’s a kind of person I wish I could be sometimes as I’m so much more emotionally driven. She does have feelings though and while I admire her for making the right choices I also feel for what is going on in her heart that she doesn’t show anyone. Her cousin John is exasperating especially the selfish way he leans on Nell. Although he is made out to just be like a child who wants love and because of the in depth character study you can’t quite hate him. I enjoyed Nell’s parents as well. They had more going on inside then you might think and could have been easily glazed over by the author, yet weren’t. There are three relationships filled with ‘violent love’ that serve as a warning to Nell to not let her feelings get away with her when she knows she will get hurt. These were all fascinating and dramatic. A young poet gets sucked into a girl who doesn’t make him happy. She’s spoilt and they argue a lot, yet he can’t get rid of his soft spot for her and gives everything up for her. A woman commits suicide over a married man she had been seeing. Another young girl falls pregnant, but is almost left destitute as her lover has been conscripted for the army at the same time. There’s some real tragedy here, yet we see it more from sensible Nell’s perspective and it helps her not make a mistake.

Did I Like it?:
I really enjoyed this novel! I took longer to read this than I thought I would, but it was so pleasant to dip into. The world and the characters were so real to me. A great coming of age story. I feel like I read this at the right time because while I’m older than Nell, I’m about to move to the city for the first time and so I felt a personal connection with it. Right book right time. I now really want to check out Stella Gibbon’s other books as well!

Do I Recommend it?:
Yes! If you like coming of age stories, modern classics and if a story of someone living in the city for the first time appeals to you.

[Kirsten · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pure Gibbons. Another sensible, down-to-earth heroine contrasted with the bohemian set, who are definitely poked fun at (not for their love of art but for their immaturity and shallow understanding of freedom and responsibility). As always, I enjoyed Gibbons' understanding of human nature. The heroine's father is a former parson who's undergone a spiritual crisis and left the church, but now wants to take on the more modest role of a verger/caretaker at another church. He meets with Reverend Mollison of that church, who worries that the parish won't accept someone with his unorthodox past:

"They were simple people; practical, everyday Christians to whom theological speculation and the niceties of spiritual crisis were likely--Mr Mollison did not think that any of them had so far come up against either--to prove very suspect indeed. It often required, unfortunately, a certain worldly experience to make people tolerant of misfortune, unless its crushingly undeserved quality was clear and plain." (p. 221)

Somehow I loved being brought to that last sentence. That rueful musing on human nature's failure of imagination/empathy with its "unfortunately." And then the larger book, too, gives us a young girl as heroine who is busy quite open-mindedly acquiring her own worldly experience and thus avoiding narrowness of thought or judgement toward others.

and Gibbons is wonderfully funny, too, as in this exchange between the heroine, Nell, and her friend, who thinks back to a previous romantic interest she'd had in a poet and considers whether another one, named Benedict, might be a suitable object for her affections now:

"She broke into a flow of precise yet babbling sounds that Nell had difficulty in translating. 'But he had a dirty beard, and that I could not take,' she went on. 'Has Benedict a beard?'

'Not so far,' said Nell cautiously, 'but they do tend to grow them suddenly, you know.'"

tee hee!

[Laura Spira · Rating 5 out of 5]

I *really* enjoyed this book. The evocation of London in the 1950s, the eccentric characters and the sensible Nell in the middle of it all, trying to cope with new experiences in a doggedly practical way gripped me in the way that the best novels can. Her charming, louche, manipulative cousin John is repulsive but the reader can understand the attraction for her. His bohemian friends - untidy, argumentative living wildly unstructured lives, spill from the pages and we can share Nell's mixture of horror and fascination at them.

Nell and John are very young - only in their late teens - and we have a hint of their future lives which may not be very happy. John will clearly meet a sad end but the manuscript he carries everywhere with him will be published to great acclaim. I wished I could read it!

The book was published in 1956 and is very much of its time. Television is in its relative infancy but has made Aunt Peggy famous. Coffee bars are springing up everywhere, travel abroad is becoming more accessible. Relationships between the classes are changing and immigrants are more noticeable on the streets of London. The sense for Nell and her parents of the challenge of adapting to a changing world is well conveyed.

Stella Gibbons also wrote beautifully. Her descriptions of Hampstead Heath and its environs are little prose poems. This is nothing like Cold Comfort Farm which made her famous (and which I didn't enjoy when I read it many years ago). This book was an accidental - and serendipitous find - I shall now seek out her other books.

[Little Rugg]

Ya classic Stella gibbons, everyone a tortured soul and never shuts up but all jolly larks and what.

[Georgie G · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are a bunch of middlebrow novels about young women leaving home for the first time and having to find ill-fitting jobs as typists, artists models or waitresses in London. There's Olivia Manning's 'Doves of Venus', Barbara Pym's 'Excellent Women' and Barbara Comyns' 'Our Spoons came from Woolworths'. It's a particular niche that I love and Here Be Dragons fits right into this group with the story of Nell, a young woman from Dorset, who has moved to Hampstead with her highbrow mother and ill father. Her mum is snobby and clever while her father faces the challenge of being an anglican priest who's lost his faith. Living on the charity of her famous aunt who works in TV, Nell finds her feet as a waitress at the Primula Cafe, enjoying the daily contact with the cafe staff and the folk of Hampstead while negotiating a loose romance with her footloose cousin and unfamiliar social relationships with his friends.

I really enjoyed Here Be Dragons. It's well written, slightly acidic, has humorous characterisations and a determined heroine in Nell. The evocation of London, particularly Hampstead in the 50s, is outstanding to the extent that I spent some time on Google maps on street view trying to familiarise myself with the surroundings of Nell, her family and friends!

To say I've been Gibbonsed, struck by Stella and wooed by her writing into fandom is probably an understatement.

[Louise Culmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nell Sely’s father was a clergyman but has had some sort of crisis of faith and left the church. His sister Lady Fairfax, a successful Tv personality, has given him the use of her house in Hampstead. her ex husband Charles Gaunt and their son John move into the flat upstairs. Lady Fairfax fixes Nell up with an office job which she finds very boring, and soon leaves it for a job as a waitress in a tea shop, where she can earn more money and which she finds much more interesting. Nell’s cousin John, to whom Nell is mysteriously attracted, introduces her to the world of his bohemian friends, artists and poets who spend their time in dingy coffee bars or jazz clubs listening to Humphrey Littleton. Nell is rather bemused by John’s friends, but somehow she is fascinated by John (I don’t know why, he seemed extremely tiresome to me). Nell knows that her love for John is hopeless, so tries not to give way to it, and meanwhile works towards her ambition of owning her own tea shop. There are some interesting characters, and great descriptions of London life in the 50s,especially the rather messy life of the young people with arty pretensions whom John mixes with. I liked Nell and hoped that John was not going to make her too unhappy. On the whole an enjoyable story though I could not enter into Nell’s feelings for John.

[Vicki · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is such a weird book. Likable and weird. The best way to explain it is that Nell Sely, the daughter of a country vicar who has lost his faith and a genteel woman who can only be described as a good Englishwoman, is living in a new world. They've moved to Hampstead Heath, to live in her aunt's old house (which is split into apartments). Nell, who is sort of a naive but assertive in her own ways, has a bit of a romance with her cousin, a Bohemian Beatnik of the nth degree. Yeah, yeah. The cousin thing is weird, but the cool part is the time and place. England in the early 50s, with the classes changing their minds about what is proper, and young people changing their minds about what they want to do with themselves. London is beautifully described, and the scenes stick with you. If you can find a copy, read it!

[Ben · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think Gibbons' characters came across as caricatures, rather than anything else. A problem which caused me to skip through to the end. The rest was . . . okay, but didn't hold my interest. Overall, I found it dull.

[Avril · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gibbon was 54 when she published this book about nineteen-year-old Nell, her beautiful but appalling seventeen-year-old cousin John, his coffee-drinking artistic set, and Nell’s debutant friend Elizabeth, and it is obvious that Gibbon had very little sympathy with bohemian London and the poets, painters, writers and dancers who lived peripatetic lives on almost nothing. Nell rejects her middle-class background to become a waitress and by the end of the book she and Elizabeth are running an Espresso Bar together - my experience of coffee in London does not give me much hope about the quality of the espresso they serve. This is a brilliant slice of 1950s life, just on the cusp of the sexual revolution, with homosexuality mentioned (though not by name) and unmarried lovers (one of whom becomes pregnant, of course, pre-the Pill) while Nell watches the mistakes those who give up everything for love make and considers lifelong spinsterhood as a safer and saner alternative. Fascinating is Gibbons’ description of Nell’s father’s depression, which he experiences as a loss of faith that has him losing his job as an Anglican priest. It is quite clearly the sort of illness that would today be treated by medication and counselling (Gibbons describes it so accurately that I wonder if she suffered from it) but at the time it was seen as a moral failing. By the end Nell seems to be in her right place, and hopefully has seen through the dreadful John, on whole not even the Army seems to be having any effect.

[Lesley Glaister · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this novel but wasn't at any point gripped. The narration is the omniscient type that slips about, which can work wonderfully, but here made the story feel scattered and unfocused. The main character, Nell, moves to London, falls reluctantly in love with her impossible younger cousin, John, and gains experience far outside that of her sheltered Dorset upbringing. There's a subplot about her father, a vicar who's lost his faith, and her aunt and uncle, stars of the new craze sweeping the land - television. The novel gives a good sense of the changing times, set at the end of the 1950's at the beginning of beat movement, the era when the teenager becomes a phenomenon, and we see the widening gulf between the expectations of the adults and this younger generation. Britain's still recovering from its beating in the Second World War and there's a good sense of the shabbiness alongside the bright and new-fangled, which becomes emblemized by the difference between traditional tea-shops and the more exciting and exotic Coffee Bars which were beginning to pop up. It's a great book to read for a sense of the times, and it's entertaining enough, but the characters never real came to life for me and I found the ending flat and disappointing.

[Kevin Tindell · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book gave an excellent insight into the London cafe culture of the 1950s. Very evocative and atmospheric. I found the plot to be a little thin. Enjoyable nevertheless.

[Skylar BB · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed every bit of it.
Is it me or does anybody else see a resemblance between John character and Howl character (of Howl's moving castle)?

[Gareth Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s really what one would expect. A story of class and of youth, very well delivered, but with nothing especially novel or startling. One for the reader who enjoys well-presented, mid twentieth century fiction. There is of course the typical caveat in reading books from this period in that some attitudes jar today

[Candy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I feel like I fell into a world and the only way to get back there is to immediately start reading this again.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nell's own temperament, with its roots in the liberal tradition [...] had combined with the shortage of labour and the decay of the class-system in England to produce a situation too complex for the privileged children of the new proletariat to grasp, and they felt only an uncomfortable mingling of embarrassment, superiority and mockery. (p. 165)

This paragraph is the nub of Here Be Dragons.  First published in post war Britain in 1956, it's a mid-career novel by the English author Stella Gibbons (1902-1989). Wikipedia tells me that Gibbons never repeated the success of her comic novel Cold Comfort Farm, (see my review) and I've read a couple of disappointed reviews of this one reissued by Vintage in 2011, but I like it better than Cold Comfort Farm. I think its depiction of the tectonic changes in postwar English society is horribly, brilliantly perceptive.

And I am always interested in reading about the society my parents chose to leave when we set off for warmer climes.  (Plus, there's a passage about the London fog that nearly killed my mother that is chilling to read, if a reader knows that it killed thousands of people.)

Here Be Dragons is an allusion to the dangerous and unexplored regions of the uncharted areas of medieval maps, and the novel explores uncharted territory in the brave new world of postwar Britain.  The imperial map of the globe was starting to decolonise, and there were massive shifts in British demographics along with the pain of postwar austerity which contributed to an exodus of people who could leave for economies in better shape.  Stella Gibbons nails this upheaval through the character of Nell, who is whisked out of her dull life in Dorset when the Church ejects her father Martin from his living because he has lost his faith.  Penniless, the family moves into a grace-and-favour flat lent by Aunt Peggy, and since neither Martin nor his stalwart wife Anna have ever had a job, it falls to Nell to support them.  Aunt Peggy, who has a new career as a 'personality' at the BBC, steamrollers Nell into a dreary job in an office.  For Nell's parents the idea of 'work' for someone of their class is anathema, but they agree to Nell's badly paid and boring employment because they have no choice, and it is, at least, 'respectable'.

Gibbons doesn't labour the point, but the ensuing years have demonstrated the cruelty of churches to their errant clergy.  After years of unpaid labour, they are cast out of their communities with no money, no job, no home, no provision for their old age and no fitness for other kinds of employment.  Remember Margaret Hale's father in Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South (1854) and the upheaval caused by his dispute with the church, and how Gaskell used it to expose the schism between new 19th century industrial wealth and old money?

Nell's demoralised parents do not know, of course, how awful her office work is.  She is stifled there not just by the smoke-filled room but by her employer's patronising, gendered and anachronistic assumptions.    Nell is smart, hardworking and blessed with untapped initiative, but she has no future at Akkro Products until some other hapless woman who is trapped there leaves to marry. Women's work and the labour of the working classes, which was essential to the wartime economy and materiel production, has resumed its prewar limitations, as if nothing had changed.  But it has. People of Aunt Peggy's class can't find staff willing to work under the oppressive conditions of domestic service. Nell isn't willing to work for a pittance either. Not for long.  She gets herself a much better paid job in a tea-room, and before long has savings to put towards opening a tea-room of her own!

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2022/11/21/h...

[Grace Harwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very gentle read, but I did so enjoy it. The story is as follows: Nell Sely has been uprooted from her father's vicarage (because her father has lost his faith) and moved to a flat in Hampstead. At first her controlling aunt gets her a job as a typist (which she hates) but then, falling in with a crowd of Bohemian artist types) she decides she wants to be a waitress and gets a job at The Primula tea room. Nell loves this and it launches an ambition within her to have her own tea room. That's pretty much it story-wise, but what I really loved about this is the way that Nell is not influenced by the artistic types who seemingly pity her for her 'lack' of ambition and follows her own course. She shows a strength of character which is more determined than the 'individuals' who all flock together, wearing the same clothes as a uniform and exhibit the same behaviours, a bit like sheep. Nell is just such a marvellous character and when the narrative follows her, it skips along. Less likeable is her cousin John who seeks to direct her every move. Fortunately, Nell is much too smart for that. A lovely novel set at the end of the 50s and beginning of the sexual revolution of the 1960s - I'd really recommend it.

[Ms Jayne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant, quite cynical novel on the dangers of sacrificing everything for love. It should be required reading for people of an overly romantic nature and is a clear portrait of various toxic relationships and their consequences.

Obviously I wanted to strangle John immediately as he dangles Nell on a string alternately leading her on and putting her down. Gibbons characterises him brilliantly as a kind of tour guide of Bohemian London who drags Nell around, scrounging money and criticising her dress sense while holding her in contempt for her conventional job. Then there's the outwardly tormented Gardis and Ben and the inwardly suffering Lady Bottlewasher and 'the boyfriend' who parks up every night outside the Everyman cinema. Silent suffering, poverty, hunger homelessness, family breakdown, teenage pregnancy: unhappiness everywhere but all treated with Gibbons's humour and light touch.

Most of all I enjoyed Nell's initiation into the post-War World of the Espresso Bar and her transition from the more conservative world of the tea room which, along with the increasing popularity of the TV, demonstrated the march of progress perfectly.

[Eleanor]

I’m not sure what I expected from the author of Cold Comfort Farm—apart from knowing her other work was very unlike that one—but it wasn’t this: a brilliant, timeless evocation of being young, inexperienced and underfunded in London. Nineteen-year-old Nell Sely does have parents and relations providing an emotional safety net, but her vicar father’s loss of faith has also meant a loss of income, and she is the only one who can provide. Her job as a waitress in a tea shop, which she unexpectedly loves, and her encounters with her charismatic, self-centered cousin John’s bohemian friends, are equally enthralling. The mid-1950s setting is felicitious: not quite the swinging sixties, with many characters still enshrouded by suburban respectability (including Nell herself), but gearing up for that decade, with social change everywhere and youth culture gaining strength like an unstoppable tide. I’ve been to some of these parties, I’ve met some of these people, they were as charismatic and annoying in the mid-2010s as they were sixty years before, and North London geography hasn’t changed a bit. I absolutely loved it.

[Kalilah]

Gave up 89 pages in.
I expected great things from Stella Gibbon, her "Cold Comfort Farm" is one of my absolute favourites. But this one did nothing for me. The characters are all dull and depressive, and actually the general mood of the story is quite depressive; I can tell it's going nowhere, very slowly and depressingly. Based on the blurb I was looking forward to a jolly, fast-paced romp, in the style of Cold Comfort Farm but with possibly more substance, but there was simply no romping to be had.
The tricky thing about reading novels written by the same author, is that the characters from each story are all usually quite similar, but not quite, and it rather ruins the sharpness and alure of the characters you particularly liked from the one novel that you particualrly liked. In my case, Nell is a less vivid and lovable version of Robert Poste's Child, and John is an equally obnoxious version of Mr Mybug, except Mr Mybug didn't get his way in anything, while John always gets his way with Nell and it's annoying.
So, sad as it is to say; I won't be reading any more Gibbons; to preserve my love for her first novel if nothing else.

[Rachel Stevenson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here we have a clever, sensible young woman from a different locale moving home in order to sort out a family, whilst dealing with an irresponsible young man and his squalid friends. This isn’t the Sussex of Cold Comfort Farm, but the Hampstead of the post-war era, when it wasn’t full of hedge fund managers and film stars, but bohemians and poor relations. Nell, the Flora of the novel, has to cope with her parents, a depressed clergyman and his supportive but unhappy wife, her aunt's ex-husband who lives upstairs and his narcissistic man-baby son, John, with whom Nell has a love-hate relationship. She's probably less successful than Flora, but this is twenty years on, Gibbons may have lost a little optimism. She is certainly pessimistic about love: it leads, in this book, to failure, compromise and suicide.

Gibbons was always interested in modernity and she presents bohemian London, with its itinerant living, middle class slumming and espresso bars in all of its grime and glory, whilst making it clear that cleanliness, responsibility and tea-rooms are far more preferable.

[D.M. Fletcher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fifties London

This gives one some idea of what English middle class people were like in the fifties.
Class consciousness was rife.
Gibbons pokes fun at all the types she must have come across.
This is not a feel good book.
There are some kind people in it, but life is not kind to them.
There is some very entertaining writing mixed with excessive and dull detail.
My mother loved these books.
Gibbons is famous for Cold Comfort Farm and the heroine of this book seems to me to be the same person as the heroine of that book - very organised and stable.
Unfortunately for her she’s in love with a very unstable, unpleasant but charming boy.
One criticism I have is that no way is this character a teenager. He is a veritable Iago and certainly not credible as a 17 year old.
There are many good characters though and it’s a book worth reading.

[Isabella ⸙ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm still not quite sure what to make of this book - other than I ended up enjoying it immensely! I'm keen to read more novels by this author.

Stella Gibbons' writing is a bit wordy (and she makes frequent use of parentheses), but once I got used to it, I appreciated the way she used her descriptions to create such an immersive, atmospheric novel. Admittedly, I know very little about post-WW2 London and the "Bohemian" movement, so I learnt quite a bit. (There were quite a few typos, however, which annoyed me, because you'd think that with a re-release and all, they'd put a bit of effort in, you know?)

Nell is strong in her silent, sensible way, which was refreshing (for me, in any case) to have in a heroine. John is so charming and selfish and manipulative, and just "ugh", but I actually enjoyed his character. I also rather liked Benedict (who's got the tortured-poet thing going on for him) and wouldn't have minded exploring more of his story.

There's not much of a plot, and for the longest time, I couldn't figure what the moral of the story was. Ultimately, however, I think that Here Be Dragons is a warning against throwing your own life and dreams away in the name of "Love".

[Miggsy · Rating 3 out of 5]

My first Stella Gibbons book, and while I found it mostly enjoyable, I really couldn't stand John. Seriously, he was so unbearable and so selfish, I was dying for someone to slap him upside freakin' head. Despite her slight naivety, I adored Nell, wished nothing but the best for her, but having to endure John was painful for me.

[Jean Walton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed this book which gives a compelling picture of times gone by, the class system and the poverty, genteel or otherwise, of many of the people. However, I didn't enjoy it quite as much as "Starlight". I think maybe this is because I'm a crime fan and there was more a sense of underlying menace in that book than this one.

[Christine · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not really enjoying this and probably won’t finish it. I wish they was more storyline about the adults rather than the teenagers. I do like Nell though. But after having read and enjoyed Nightingale Wood, this one was rather disappointing.