Grass in Piccadilly

by Noel Streatfeild

Once fashionable and plush with flowers, post-war Mayfair has lost its dazzling charm. But that didn’t stop Charlotte Nettel and her husband Sir John from swapping life in the quiet northern countryside to convert their roomy Mayfair townhouse into flats.

Their tenants come in all shapes and sizes – from pregnant couple Jack and Jenny to German migrants Paula and Heinrich – and they provide a constant stream of both entertainment and anxiety. But it’s Charlotte’s stepdaughter Penny, a disillusioned young women born into the uneasy interwar world, who proves to be the most difficult and scandalous tenant . . .

Flashing between the lives of each tenant Carnegie Medal winning author Noel Streatfeild gives us a kaleidoscopic view of post-war London in her ingenious novel, Grass in Piccadilly. For fans of Muriel Spark’s A Far Cry From Kensington.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1952

About the author

Mary Noel Streatfeild, known as Noel Streatfeild, was an author best known and loved for her children's books, including Ballet Shoes and Circus Shoes. She also wrote romances under the pseudonym Susan Scarlett .

She was born on Christmas Eve, 1895, the daughter of William Champion Streatfeild and Janet Venn and the second of six children to be born to the couple. Sister Ruth was the oldest, after Noel came Barbara, William ('Bill'), Joyce (who died of TB prior to her second birthday) and Richenda. Ruth and Noel attended Hastings and St. Leonard's Ladies' College in 1910. As an adult, she began theater work, and spent approximately 10 years in the theater.

During the Great War, in 1915 Noel worked first as a volunteer in a soldier's hospital kitchen near Eastbourne Vicarage and later produced two plays with her sister Ruth. When things took a turn for the worse on the Front in 1916 she moved to London and obtained a job making munitions in Woolwich Arsenal. At the end of the war in January 1919, Noel enrolled at the Academy of Dramatic Art (later Royal Academy) in London.

In 1930, she began writing her first adult novel, The Whicharts, published in 1931. In June 1932, she was elected to membership of PEN. Early in 1936, Mabel Carey, children's editor of J. M. Dent and Sons, asks Noel to write a children's story about the theatre, which led to Noel completing Ballet Shoes in mid-1936. In 28 September 1936, when Ballet Shoes was published, it became an immediate best seller.

According to Angela Bull, Ballet Shoes was a reworked version of The Whicharts. Elder sister Ruth Gervis illustrated the book, which was published on the 28th September, 1936. At the time, the plot and general 'attitude' of the book was highly original, and destined to provide an outline for countless other ballet books down the years until this day. The first known book to be set at a stage school, the first ballet story to be set in London, the first to feature upper middle class society, the first to show the limits of amateurism and possibly the first to show children as self-reliant, able to survive without running to grownups when things went wrong.

In 1937, Noel traveled with Bertram Mills Circus to research The Circus is Coming (also known as Circus Shoes). She won the Carnegie gold medal in February 1939 for this book. In 1940, World War II began, and Noel began war-related work from 1940-1945. During this time, she wrote four adult novels, five children's books, nine romances, and innumerable articles and short stories. On May 10th, 1941, her flat was destroyed by a bomb. Shortly after WWII is over, in 1947, Noel traveled to America to research film studios for her book The Painted Garden. In 1949, she began delivering lectures on children's books. Between 1949 and 1953, her plays, The Bell Family radio serials played on the Children's Hour and were frequently voted top play of the year.

Early in 1960s, she decided to stop writing adult novels, but did write some autobiographical novels, such as A Vicarage Family in 1963. She also had written 12 romance novels under the pen name "Susan Scarlett." Her children's books number at least 58 titles. From July to December 1979, she suffered a series of small strokes and moved into a nursing home. In 1983, she received the honor Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE). On 11 September 1986, she passed away in a nursing home.

Reviews

[Jessica Gilmore · Rating 5 out of 5]

This may be the first book I've read both set in and written imminently after the Second World War, in a grey, rationed London full of returned soldiers, reconnecting families and wartime secrets. There are no bombs, but neither are there well paid jobs, food, materials, homes - the war is over but the UK is paying the bill for 6 years of fighting and will do for many yearsto come.
With taxes and prices high, John and Charlotte sell their home in the country, a home which sheltered refugees and evacuees, to live in a London townhouse they can't afford to run. Instead they turn it into flats, letting one to a young family who married in haste and are very much repenting at leisure, another young couple who are afraid to face reality, an older couple delighted to no longer be sharing a tiny cottage with their daughter, a refugee family trying to understand their identity in a world where they don't feel British or German and are still scared to be Jewish, and John's brittle daughter Penny. Grass in Piccadilly follows this disparate group for a year during which wartime secrets are unearthed and they realise there's noting peaceful about peacetime at all. A little melancoly, thought provoking, with Streatfeild's wry characterisation throughout this is a remarkable snapshot of a remarkable time. I am so glad Bello is rprinting Streatfeild's adult work, they are utterly fascinating.

[Louise Culmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sir John Nettle and his wife Charlotte have had to sell their beloved country home, so they are going to live in their London house in a square in Mayfair. The house is too big for them, and with a chronic housing shortage in postwar London, they keep two floors for themselves and turn the rest into flats for a variety of people of different kinds. Set in the winter of 1946-7, the story is told from the point of view of a wide variety of characters, the Nettles, their various tenants, their two servants, and people who come and go in the square. It is a fascinating picture of London in its postwar state, with the people, battered but unbowed, wrestling with the problems of rationing, housing heating, plumbing etc, as well as emotional problems of various kinds. By the end, I felt I had got to know all the people in the house quite well, and was sorry to say goodbye to them.

[Orinoco Womble (tidy bag and all) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reading Streatfeild's novels for adults is like buying one of those large, brightly coloured lollipops at the Fair. They look so pretty and last so long that it takes a while to realise there's not much flavour or even sweetness to them. You lick and suck and slurp, getting the syrup all over your face and hands and dying your tongue various colours, but it's not what you could call satisfying.

So with Grass in Piccadilly. Streatfield's bland prose goes on and on and on, until a very strange twist in the plot changes everything. However, it wasn't what I would call satisfying. It was going to be three stars, but making the German Jewish family also black market hoarders was a stereotype too far.

[Louise Culmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sir John Nettle has had to sell his country home, now he and his wife Charlotte are going to live in his London house. It is much too big for them, so they are keeping two floors for themselves and turning the rest into flats to be let (they of course have two devoted servants, because no Noel Streatfield novel would be complete without a devoted retainer or two). In postwar London there is a desperate housing shortage and no lack of people eager for the flats, even in such an inconvenient old house. The various tenants who move into the flats all have their own problems, and in the course of a year we see how their lives change as they interact with each other. This novel gives a vivid picture of London recovering from six years of war, the ruined houses, the shortages of everything, how people make do with what they can get. All the characters are interesting in their own ways (I was particularly fond of the cat Mouser). There are one or two developments that I thought strained credulity a bit, but what of it? It retained my interest to the end.

[Nick]

For those interested, this is the review from The Illustrated London News, 22 Nov 1947. Grass in Piccadilly by Noel Streatfeild (Collins: 8s 6d), is a return to the “ordinary novel,” and a happy return; this is a delightful member of its class. The Nettels have had to sell their country estate. They have a big house in Mayfair – drab, deserted, post-war Mayfair – which they turn into flats. There is young Willis and his wife who is “queer” [It meant ‘odd’ in those days]; Mr Bettelheim, the worst kind of refugee, with his extremely nice wife and family; Mr and the horrid Mrs Duke and their little girl. The there is Penny on the ground floor – Sir John’s daughter, Lady Nettel's stepdaughter. And the Parkses in the basement, and the two servants, and the policeman and the milkman and the old tramp out in the square. For the renaissance of this empty house is a kind of portent or local milestone.
The Nettels hate it, they are not Londoners; but Charlotte, in particular, does her best, though she has a private worry of her own. She worries about Penny, too – her standoffishness, her uncheerful gaiety, her estrangement from her father. Why is she so thick with the Dukes? Can she and Mr Duke ……..? And so on; every floor has its drama, or even melodrama, with a happy ending for deservers. Which is as it should be.

[Fred Langridge · Rating 4 out of 5]

A multi-stranded story of all the households in a London house that's been split into flats, post-WW2. More dramatic than I'd expected from familiarity with Ballet Shoes, but this is some time later and written for adults. Lots of the characters aren't exactly nice, but they're engaging and it's very readable.

[Lesley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe three and a half - almost a four, but some period attitudes in the writing (I'm not sure one can just put them down as 'oh, the characters') made me twitch a bit. But also great period details.

[Lady Drinkwell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was a great Noel Streatfield Fan as a child and downloaded this book as an easy kindle read. I started reading it to coincide with a trip to see "Ballet Shoes" at the National Theatre in London. It was a very surprising book I must say. I imagined it would be rather genteel but in fact there is a lot of (not graphic) sex and violence. It is similar to Ballet Shoes in that it concerns a group of people living in a house in London, owned by gentry who have seen better days. A wide cross-section of society move into the house after the war and get up to all sorts of shenanigans.

[Bronwyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

⭐️⭐️⭐️½