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Jason #1
One Night in London
The gripping story of one night in a busy London teaching hospital in 1940s wartime.
It’s 1944, and at St. Martha’s Hospital the staff carry out their duties as flying rockets and bombs fall around them.
The doctors and nurses of Wally’s ward must care for their patients despite little or no sleep, dwindling supplies, and a steady stream of air raid victims.
Nurse Carter and Nurse Dean keep a watchful eye on the welfare of both patients and doctors, while Nurse Smith struggles to cope with the horror surrounding her.
Meanwhile, Senior Surgical Officer, ‘Mack’ MacDonald, aided by his young house-surgeon, Mr Jason, operates under almost impossible conditions, while also hiding a tragic secret.
During this one night in London, hospital workers and patients alike will face a wartime nightmare with determination, courage and dignity. But what will the morning bring?
One Night in London is the first novel in The Jason Trilogy by bestselling hospital fiction author Lucilla Andrews. For the first time, Lucilla's novels are now available as ebooks (with new print editions available from the late summer 2017). More at www.lucillaandrews.com
It’s 1944, and at St. Martha’s Hospital the staff carry out their duties as flying rockets and bombs fall around them.
The doctors and nurses of Wally’s ward must care for their patients despite little or no sleep, dwindling supplies, and a steady stream of air raid victims.
Nurse Carter and Nurse Dean keep a watchful eye on the welfare of both patients and doctors, while Nurse Smith struggles to cope with the horror surrounding her.
Meanwhile, Senior Surgical Officer, ‘Mack’ MacDonald, aided by his young house-surgeon, Mr Jason, operates under almost impossible conditions, while also hiding a tragic secret.
During this one night in London, hospital workers and patients alike will face a wartime nightmare with determination, courage and dignity. But what will the morning bring?
One Night in London is the first novel in The Jason Trilogy by bestselling hospital fiction author Lucilla Andrews. For the first time, Lucilla's novels are now available as ebooks (with new print editions available from the late summer 2017). More at www.lucillaandrews.com
- GenresRomance
168 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 1, 1979
64 people are currently reading
32 people want to read
About the author
Lucilla Andrews
85 books9 followersLucilla Matthew Andrews Crichton
aka
Lucilla Andrews, Diana Gordon, Joanna Marcus.
Lucilla Matthew Andrews was born on 20 November 1919 in Suez, Egypt, the third of four children of William Henry Andrews and Lucilla Quero-Bejar. They met in Gibraltar, and married in 1913. Her mother was daughter of a Spanish doctor and descended from the Spanish nobility. Her British father workerd by the Eastern Telegraph Company (later Cable and Wireless) on African and Mediterranean stations until 1932. At the age of three, she was sent to join her older sister at boarding school in Sussex.
She joined the British Red Cross in 1940 and later trained as a nurse at St Thomas' Hospital, London, during World War II. In 1947, she retired and married Dr James Crichton, and she discovered, that he was addicted to drugs. In 1949, soon after their daugther Veronica was born, he was committed to hospital and she returned to nursing and writing. In 1952, she sold her firt romance novel, published in 1954, the same year that her husband died. She specialised in Doctor-Nurse romances, using her personal experience as inspiration, and wrote over thirty-five novels since 1996. In 1969, she decided moved to Edinburgh.
Her daugther read History at Newnham College, Cambridge, and became a journalist and Labour Party communications adviser, before her death from cancer in 2002. In late 2006, Lucilla Andrews' autobiography No Time for Romance became the focus of a posthumous controversy. It has been alleged that the novelist Ian McEwan plagiarized from this work while writing his highly-acclaimed novel, Atonement. McEwan has protested his innocence. She passed away on 3 October 2006. She was a founder member of the Romantic Novelists' Association, which honoured her shortly before her death with a lifetime achievement award.
aka
Lucilla Andrews, Diana Gordon, Joanna Marcus.
Lucilla Matthew Andrews was born on 20 November 1919 in Suez, Egypt, the third of four children of William Henry Andrews and Lucilla Quero-Bejar. They met in Gibraltar, and married in 1913. Her mother was daughter of a Spanish doctor and descended from the Spanish nobility. Her British father workerd by the Eastern Telegraph Company (later Cable and Wireless) on African and Mediterranean stations until 1932. At the age of three, she was sent to join her older sister at boarding school in Sussex.
She joined the British Red Cross in 1940 and later trained as a nurse at St Thomas' Hospital, London, during World War II. In 1947, she retired and married Dr James Crichton, and she discovered, that he was addicted to drugs. In 1949, soon after their daugther Veronica was born, he was committed to hospital and she returned to nursing and writing. In 1952, she sold her firt romance novel, published in 1954, the same year that her husband died. She specialised in Doctor-Nurse romances, using her personal experience as inspiration, and wrote over thirty-five novels since 1996. In 1969, she decided moved to Edinburgh.
Her daugther read History at Newnham College, Cambridge, and became a journalist and Labour Party communications adviser, before her death from cancer in 2002. In late 2006, Lucilla Andrews' autobiography No Time for Romance became the focus of a posthumous controversy. It has been alleged that the novelist Ian McEwan plagiarized from this work while writing his highly-acclaimed novel, Atonement. McEwan has protested his innocence. She passed away on 3 October 2006. She was a founder member of the Romantic Novelists' Association, which honoured her shortly before her death with a lifetime achievement award.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
July 9, 2020
I was not expecting this book. Going by the cover, I was expecting this kind of romance heavy historical romance set during WWII but it absolutely was not.
This book follows two doctors and three nurses (as well as a few of their patients) through one night in London during 1944. As well as having to deal with the stresses of the job, they have to deal with doodles (rockets) that fall on London and disrupt their night and give them more and more casualties. The author apparently nursed during the 1940s and 1950s and part of the story comes from that experience. There is a romance between a couple of the nurses and doctors, though whether they have happy endings or not are up in the air.
I really enjoyed this. The book being set over one night gave it a sense of urgency because you knew something was going to happen in this night. It was well-paced, with certain events continuing to happen throughout the book, and I wanted to keep on writing. However, the writing style kind of battled with the plot. I wanted to keep on reading for the plot but the writing style would sometimes leave me confused and make me have to work hard to understand it and that was not what I was looking for. Mostly because we switched between POVs every few sentences which left me confusing Nurse Carter and Nurse Dean for the first quarter of the book. However, when that surprised the hell out of me. I was not expecting that at all and I really enjoyed seeing how everyone reacted to these events.
We got a wide range of characters, which I really enjoyed. There was no one protagonist that we were supposed to follow, that we were supposed to root for over the others, because they all had their own strengths and weaknesses. You would like Nurse Dean for her ability to be calm under the face of pressure and then you would dislike her for her attitude towards others for not being like that. You would like Mack for his caring about patients and then dislike him for the way he treated his wife. It was a variety of emotions towards each character and I enjoyed it mostly because you weren't ever bored with a character. I felt sympathetic towards a lot of them, like Major and Mrs Browne, and I had my favourites, like Nurse Smith, but there wasn't ever a character who came onto the page and I rolled my eyes and wanted them to just go away.
Much like the characters, we also get a lot of relationships that were complicated. Romance was there but it definitely wasn't the main part I was expecting from this book. It wasn't only the romances happening on this ward but it was also looking at how these five people had to work with each other, how you could like to work with someone for their ability to do their job and dislike them greatly as a person, as well as how a romance can crash and burn in one night. I would not have guessed that those relationships would have turned out to be like that.
That said, I don't think I'm going to continue with the series. Partly because I see that the next books in the series are not with the character I most enjoyed reading about and partly because it was the wartime nursing that I was interested in here. However, seeing nursing in a country hospital would be very interesting.
4 stars!
This book follows two doctors and three nurses (as well as a few of their patients) through one night in London during 1944. As well as having to deal with the stresses of the job, they have to deal with doodles (rockets) that fall on London and disrupt their night and give them more and more casualties. The author apparently nursed during the 1940s and 1950s and part of the story comes from that experience. There is a romance between a couple of the nurses and doctors, though whether they have happy endings or not are up in the air.
I really enjoyed this. The book being set over one night gave it a sense of urgency because you knew something was going to happen in this night. It was well-paced, with certain events continuing to happen throughout the book, and I wanted to keep on writing. However, the writing style kind of battled with the plot. I wanted to keep on reading for the plot but the writing style would sometimes leave me confused and make me have to work hard to understand it and that was not what I was looking for. Mostly because we switched between POVs every few sentences which left me confusing Nurse Carter and Nurse Dean for the first quarter of the book. However, when that surprised the hell out of me. I was not expecting that at all and I really enjoyed seeing how everyone reacted to these events.
We got a wide range of characters, which I really enjoyed. There was no one protagonist that we were supposed to follow, that we were supposed to root for over the others, because they all had their own strengths and weaknesses. You would like Nurse Dean for her ability to be calm under the face of pressure and then you would dislike her for her attitude towards others for not being like that. You would like Mack for his caring about patients and then dislike him for the way he treated his wife. It was a variety of emotions towards each character and I enjoyed it mostly because you weren't ever bored with a character. I felt sympathetic towards a lot of them, like Major and Mrs Browne, and I had my favourites, like Nurse Smith, but there wasn't ever a character who came onto the page and I rolled my eyes and wanted them to just go away.
Much like the characters, we also get a lot of relationships that were complicated. Romance was there but it definitely wasn't the main part I was expecting from this book. It wasn't only the romances happening on this ward but it was also looking at how these five people had to work with each other, how you could like to work with someone for their ability to do their job and dislike them greatly as a person, as well as how a romance can crash and burn in one night. I would not have guessed that those relationships would have turned out to be like that.
That said, I don't think I'm going to continue with the series. Partly because I see that the next books in the series are not with the character I most enjoyed reading about and partly because it was the wartime nursing that I was interested in here. However, seeing nursing in a country hospital would be very interesting.
4 stars!
November 15, 2018
Lucilla Andrews always writes engagingly of the experiences of medical staff, especially in a busy hospital, and 'One Night in London' was no exception. The author writes vividly and evocatively from her own experience, and the level of detail takes the reader right into her world. It was really interesting to read about the conditions for medical staff and patients in the middle of a war-torn London, coping with the fear and tragedy of constantly expecting to be taken out by bombs, and at the same time attempting to alleviate the suffering of the injured, and to save lives where possible. Andrews' characters are not drawn very clearly (there are the usual stereotypes of a romance novel) but she makes them likeable enough for the reader to care about what happens to them.
May 4, 2025
The thing I've always liked about Lucilla Andrews' novels, and that sets them apart from other "nurse/doctor romances" is the emphasis she places on the patients, and on the medical details. The patients are real people, not just background. They have lives, and personalities, and back stories. The medical details are accurate, the treatments described, often in detail, and these make the hospitals and situations come alive. Andrews was a nurse herself, serving in a London hospital during the War, and drew on her own notes and diaries for this story.
June 5, 2021
The entire story takes place over one night shift in a London hospital during WWII, and it was terrifying. There is a romance, but the book is really more about WWII and what it was like for Londoners. I felt like I was there.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 29, 2020
The sheer number of characters made this book rough going at first but I'm glad I stuck with it. Really interesting look at one particular ward on one particular night in London during the Blitz.
November 10, 2018
Liking this trilogy very much, seems to be on a higher plane from som of her others such as The Print Petticoat and The Young Doctors Downstairs.
June 28, 2025
Liked the characters, interesting how the hospital still continues during WWIi.
January 1, 2019
The best of Lucilla Andrews’ books are the ones about nursing during the Second World War. This story is set at St Martin’s (based on St Thomas’ where she herself trained and nursed) and covers one night shift in a men’s ward in 1944 whilst the V1 “doodlebugs” and V2 rockets were aimed at London. Yes, there’s an element of romance, but really it’s about the characters on the ward that night - the exhausted stoicism of the staff and the various patients who, in a rather stereotypical way it must be said, fit the “we can take it” image of wartime Londoners. Perhaps this book deserves 3.5 stars rather than 4 but I’ve been generous!
(It’s good to find these vintage books released on Kindle)
(It’s good to find these vintage books released on Kindle)
February 26, 2025
I love Lucilla Andrews - although sometimes I'm not sure why. But this was so not good.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews