The English Air – D E Stevenson (1940)

This week of course is the 1940 club hosted again by Simon and Karen – and I got reading in good time, so that I would be able to review what I read. I had meant to post earlier in the week, but it seems I never can tell how a week will pan out for me – so here I am feverishly typing away on Friday. 

I chose two books from the wonderful Dean Street Press – The English Air by D E Stevenson and The Stone of Chastity by Margery Sharp. DSP can always be relied upon, however I can’t be, so it’s unlikely I’ll get that second book reviewed.

There is a lot that is perhaps surprising in The English Air – more of that later – I have seen it described as one of DES’s best and I can see why. It’s certainly a delightful novel, and the inclusion of letters between DES and her publisher in this edition, certainly make for interesting reading. The English Air is a novel with a lot going on, and DES balances those different themes perfectly, giving us humour, romance, and tension in wartime Europe. 

Opening in the spring of 1938 when tensions across Europe were already heightened, Sophie Braithwaite and her daughter Wynne await the arrival of a cousin from Germany. Franz is the son of Sophie’s favourite cousin Elsie and the German man she met around the time of the First World War. Sophie never saw her cousin again, as she died not long after WW1 and she’s never met Elsie’s now grown up son before. Living with the widowed Sophie and her daughter is Dane, Sophie’s brother-in-law who has rooms in the house, from where he comes and goes with his factotum Hartley. Dane is Major Worthington, but just exactly who or what he is, is left to our imagination, though he clearly ‘knows’ people in some sort of intelligence role. Sophie also has a son, who having joined the navy spends most of the novel on his ship.

Unbeknownst to Sophie and her family, Franz has been sent to his English family by his father, to observe the English and report back on their general attitudes around all that is happening in Germany. Franz’s father is a personal advisor to Hitler but this of course is also unknown to Sophie. When he arrives Franz appears to be a very formal, stiff young man, whose English is just a little too perfect, but he is also perfectly pleasant, polite and interested in everyone around him and Wynne sees he just needs a bit of loosening up. Wynne wastes no time in introducing Franz to her friends and her cousin, involving him in social get togethers and tennis tournaments. Everyone accepts Franz happily, there are no negative attitudes shown toward him, the First World War is a generation ago, and everyone is busy having a good time, certain that nothing like that can really happen again.

 “There were pretty carpets, good china, and an abundance of excellent food; there were magazines and papers and books lying about, and boxes of cigarettes for anyone who wanted them … there was all this, but above all there was peace. Peace, thought Franz, peace and happiness.”

The atmosphere around Franz is one of happy inclusivity and welcome, good food and good company soon work their magic on the lonely young man. Franz more than just unbends though, becoming Frank to everyone, he starts to question everything he’s been told. Clearly someone who isn’t entirely happy with everything that has happened in Germany, Franz starts to see things with a different lens – the leader he has believed in, begins to look less credible. He falls in love with Wynne, but before he can say anything, events in Europe so distress him, he feels he must leave Sophie’s home for London, later returning to Germany. 

It’s the whole tone of the novel (considering when it was written and published) that surprised and pleased me. It’s hardly surprising that there is an overwhelmingly patriotic feeling towards everyone and anything British, but it’s not the gratingly jingoistic tone I have encountered elsewhere – it’s just all very positive, and idealised. Not that surprising, really. Franz is a young man who has had one narrative thrust at him his whole life, now given new experiences he begins to see things differently. What I applaud DES for particularly here though is that she doesn’t just rubbish the whole of the German nation. Later we see Franz return to Germany distressed and disillusioned, he finds his aunt at home, frightened and worn down by recent events, he hears about a terrifying arrest of someone he’s known his whole life. 

“Our nation is being kept in a state of fear. It is drilled into uniformity. If this goes on much longer it will destroy Germany’s soul. A man needs a little piece of personal life … some happiness and security … without this he becomes an animal, a beast of burden, driven here and there at his masters’ whim … and the masters, Franz!” added Herr Oetzen, “The masters, what are they? Small men scrambling for power and preferment and caring little who is trampled underfoot.”

He is a young man who wants to serve his country but doesn’t want to fight against the British, he has begun to see the Nazi regime for what it is – and he is deeply distressed by it. The few German characters we meet aren’t Nazis – and DES clearly makes the distinction between Germans and Nazis. We come to see Franz as a young man who loves his country and wants to help heal it and rebuild it but acknowledges that there are things wrong with it. 

“He began to realise that it was not Hitler but Hitlerism which must be rooted out before Germany could become whole and sane and able to take her rightful place amongst the great nations of the world. “It seems hopeless,” said Franz at last in a sombre tone.”

So, the war gets underway and Wynne, also nursing very tender feelings for Franz, has no idea of where he is, and what might be happening to him. Dane has reason to think that Franz might be putting himself at risk, after hearing a familiar voice on a German radio broadcast. 

A thoroughly enjoyable novel from D E Stevenson, I’m  delighted I was able to read it for the 1940 club.