20 books by Mary Hocking
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Overview: Born in in London in 1921, Mary was educated at Haberdashers’ Aske’s Girls School, Acton. During the Second World War she served in the Women’s Royal Naval Service (Wrens) attached to the Fleet Air Arm Meteorology branch and then briefly with the Signal Section in Plymouth. Writing was in her blood. Juggling her work as a local government officer in Middlesex Education Department with writing, at first short stories for magazines and pieces for The Times Educational Supplement, she then had her first book, The Winter City, published in 1961.
Genre: Historical Fiction
The Hopeful Traveller
A Time of War told the story of a group of Wrens on a West Country airfield, but now the war is over, the girls are dispersed, and must learn to endure the rigours of the early post-war years, as well as the boredoms and perplexities of civilian life. While Kerren takes a job as a librarian and tries to forget her husband, who was killed in the war, her friend, Robin, has married a kind, conventional lawyer and lives in Cheltenham. But the lives of these two are still, though more remotely, linked; their reunions with other men and women from the old Station, and Kerren’s efforts to adapt herself to a life far less sheltered than her wartime one, provide both comedy and some near-tragedy.
Mary Hocking drew on her own experiences as an ex-Wren to trace the changes of emotional temperature, the disillusionment and the challenges, the need to realize new ways of life and the necessity to re-create themselves, experienced by her characters in this wonderful novel.
The Winter City
The conflict between personal responsibility towards individuals and concern for which is no less forceful today than when Mary Hocking wrote this novel.
The Winter City is set in an Iron-curtain country where the people are on the point of rising against their Communist government. Widowed Helen Jenner and her young Canadian friend, Kate Blanchard, work at the British Embassy in the capital. Kate is infatuated with Doyle Lawrence, and EngIish journalist secretly involved with the revolutionary movement. Doyle’s friend, Paul Daniels, also a journalist but a more responsible character, has fallen in love with Helen. When the revolution finally breaks out, both Doyle and Paul find themselves in situations where the most difficult decisions of their lives have to be made. Both must draw on immense reserves of courage to follow what they know deep down to be the right path.
Visitors to the Crescent
When an antique shop in Holland Park is burgled, the seemingly quiet life of its proprietors, Edward Saneck and George Vickers, is suddenly in the spotlight. Why are the police so interested in a run-of-the-mill burglary, and what does it have to do with a hit and run which happened down the road?
Upstairs in the flat above the shop, the residents are also hiding secrets. Jessica Holt, a shy children’s book writer is having an affair with Saneck, a man with a devastating and shadowy past. Lodger Paddy is a troublemaker, mixed up with some unpleasant characters, including the violent and controlling Vickers. Superintendent Harper and Inspector MacLeish have their work cut out unravelling the complex web woven by these residents. Each has their own reason for mistrusting the police but as Vickers becomes ever more dangerous, the truth of life at Cedar Crescent must come crashing down around them.
A tense psychological thriller packed with intrigue and espionage, with characters that will keep you guessing.
A Particular Place
The parishioners of a small West Country market town are uncertain what to make of their new Anglican vicar with his candlelit processions. And, though Michael Hoath embraces challenge, his enthusiasm is sapped by their dogged traditionalism. Moreover, Valentine’s imperial temperament is more suited to the amateur dramatics she excels at than the role of vicar’s wife. Their separate claims to insecurity are, for the most part, concealed and so both are surprised when Michael falls in love with a member of his congregation: a married woman, neither young nor beautiful. In tracing the effects of this unlikely attraction, Mary Hocking offers humour, sympathy and an overwhelming sense of the poignancy of human expectations.
Daniel Come to Judgement
When President Aluwawa purges his country of foreign helpers Daniel Kerr, a micro-biologist, returns to Yeominster, feeling displaced and dispossessed. Yet he has a family there. His wife, Erica, more used to his absence than his presence, and two children, Emma and Giles. But family togetherness is short-lived, for Daniel has a gift for disruption, and it is a relief when he is posted to a research unit at Brocklehurst. But Brocklehurst is not his scene and he resigns on grounds of conscience, thus providing the press with a new sensation. Finding a job teaching at his son’s school, he becomes entangled in a controversy over a bypass, and when the Yeominster Conservation Society fails in its object, the schoolboy revolutionaries take over traffic control and for one memorable day the life of Yeominster is turned upside down. In a manner which is thoughtful, lucid and humorous, Mary Hocking relates personal problems and private causes to social problems and public causes, neither easily coped with, or avoided.
Family Circle
As a child, Flora (nicknamed ‘Pug’) used often to visit the Routh family at Lewes. She returns as a young woman, to help the parents with their daughter, Margaret, who has had a nervous breakdown mysteriously linked with Katmandu, and is being treated by the local doctor. Margaret’s brother Timothy turns up unexpectedly from abroad: her sister Constance is the mainstay of the household.
But it is their parents on whom Pug’s attention is most often fixed. They had been figures of great power and glory to her as a girl: Mr. Routh is now a radio personality, a man up to his elbows in countless good causes, whose winning charm is steadied by his wife’s good sense, her equal devotion to him and to her multifarious public duties. Gradually, though, Pug begins to see through the façade of this perfect couple to the characters beneath it. When the family becomes involved in a scandal, the utter self-deception of Mr. Routh and the almost sublime self-centredness of his wife are at last mercilessly exposed.
The Climbing Frame
This is the story of how a trivial event may be inflated by press, television and mere gossip into a national scandal. A small boy falls off a climbing frame in his school playground: though he is hardly at all injured, his mother accuses the headmaster of negligence. Soon the County Education Office and the County Council Education Committee are involved. Matters are complicated because the headmaster in question is in love with a young employee of the Education Office, while the Chief Education Officer, a liberal-minded man, is increasingly sniped at by his deputy, by a County councillor, and by the press. The Climbing Frame is a compelling and totally convincing novel about a subject of which Mary Hocking had real knowledge. Both the official and the private aspects of the cause celèbre are presented with an accuracy and a sympathy which are beyond praise.
Ask No Question
The Alpine tunnel is closed, so two men ignore their orders and head for the St. Bernard Pass, taking them to Italy . . . Later, they learn that if they had obeyed orders, they would have been ambushed. Stephen Mitchell and Dan Burke are British agents assigned to keep an eye on a scientist suspected of intentions to defect, but in the obscure way of bureaucracy, they have little in common with one another. In the appalling heat encountered along with their unwary quarry at Lake Maggiore, their differences begin to flare into open hostility. And then Miriam appears, whether irrelevantly or by design, who can tell? The fact remains that Mitchell had known her in Berlin, where she had wanted his help with a problem of her own. Drawn to her in a way inexplicable even to himself, Mitchell becomes ever more deeply involved in Miriam’s dilemma until the idea takes root that there is a way to help. The trouble is, the method entails betraying everything for which he stands . . .
Checkmate
In Polwithian, Cornwall, strangers are always noticed. So when an unknown man arrives in the village enquiring about the Jory family, who have been living on the same farm for decades, news soon spreads. What is his interest in the Jorys, and Melita in particular? It’s not long before the attention of Silas Jory, Melita’s abandoned husband, is caught. Still living with the consequences of her disappearance, Silas meets with the stranger to discover his purpose. Eighteen years is a long enough time for scars to heal, but the stranger has not come to Polwithian without purpose and the effects of his presence ripple throughout the quiet community. Old wounds begin to feel newly painful, and long-forgotten ambitions resurface, disrupting everyone’s lives and bringing about unwanted change . . .
The Sparrow
The theme of The Sparrow is the conflict presented to Ralph Kimberley, a London vicar, by his ardent support of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Although a kind, well-intentioned man, he does not realise the effect his sympathies are having on his parish, nor on those who are close to him. His wife, Myra, feels neglected and unloved and finds herself taking an unhealthy interest in Keith Wilson, a young discharged prisoner whom Ralph has befriended. His orphaned niece, Sarah, too, feels herself alone and unwanted. It takes dramatic events to bring home to Ralph the knowledge that his personal obligations must come before his devotion to the cause. Instead of choosing the role of a martyr, he must perform an act of apparent cowardice to begin a fresh start.
The Young Spaniard
"There was a gleam of humour in his eyes, but it was not strong enough to counteract a certain bleakness in the thin face. What was there here for Rose?" A Scots lawyer, James Kerr, has been asked by a relative to investigate the rumour that his cousin, Rose, has taken up with ‘a young Spaniard’. When he reaches Barcelona, he finds that Raoul is not so young, and that his affair with Rose, who works in a travel agency, presents certain enigmatic aspects. And how does the scruffy, ex-Civil-War fighter, Milo, come into the picture? Unwillingly James Kerr finds himself embroiled in the mystery, suffering painfully at the hands of the police, but prevented from chucking up the whole business by his growing love for Rose’s friend, Frangcon, a young schoolmistress.
The Very Dead of Winter
In this haunting novel, echoing mystery play and fairy tale, a family is forced to confront the grievances and emotional confusions of their shared past. In the very dead of winter they assemble at a remote country cottage enveloped by snow. Ostensibly they are celebrating Christmas, but festivities are marred by the presence of Konrad, who is dying. Florence, his manipulative wife, views Konrad’s imminent death with annoyance; their two grown-up children bear the scars of this imperfect union. At the heart of the novel is Sophia, Florence’s unorthodox sister and their host, who seems able to stand aside from family combat, yet guards a secret that has relevance for them all. Here, with characteristic insight and compassion, Mary Hocking unravels different kinds of love and need.
A Time of War
A Time of War offers a first-hand looks at the dangers, loves and everyday dramas of a Fleet Air Arm Training centre. Set in the West Country, it give a Wren’s- eye view of the WWII – following a group of young women as they enter the services world. Mary Hocking’s novel explores the gossip, the parties, and the tedium of wartime – and how the women and their friendships are tested by it. The women found within cabin 8 have been forced together despite their differences. We meet Kerren, an Irish girl who starts her story swept away with the romance of war-time; Beatie, confident and unafraid; Jessie insecure and unsure of her place with the other girls; Robin, immaculate and standoffish and the other, changing inhabitants of cabin 8. As each woman interacts with the war in her own, unique way, we build up a picture of the real life of wartime Britain through the people who lived through it.
Letters from Constance
In 1939, as they leave school, Constance and Sheila vow to keep in touch. Posted to Ireland in the WRNS, Constance marries Fergus, a gregarious Irishman. Before long, stifled by domesticity and motherhood, she envies Sheila, writing poetry and married to the fiercely creative Miles. Gradually, however, a different reality emerges, for Constance has unacknowledged talents of her own, while Sheila’s public success is bought at great personal cost. From the war to the 1980s, Constance writes to Sheila of her everyday hopes and sorrows, and through her we learn much of Sheila’s gallantry and courage. We learn, too, of the social and political developments that challenge and shape her values, until finally outside events come too close and the fragile balance of Constance’s own world is threatened.
Look, Stranger
When Matthew Vereker arrives from the American Mid-West on a year’s exchange as vicar of All Hallows on Helmsley Island, he thinks there are no people in England, but only ‘members of classes dying behind their stockades’. He soon finds that the reality is more complicated. Helmsley Island, once known as Smugglers’ Island, is cluttered with smart bungalows, decaying cottages, day trippers, squatters, archaeologists, agitators – and the ghosts of nuns who walk in the grounds of the old priory. Besides the normal if varied manifestations of Christianity there are the followers of the Ancient People, antedating Christianity, who dance in the nude at nights.
As summer moves into winter Vereker strives to cope with a variety of problems; his patchwork parish; his young daughter, Nan; Zoe and Tudor Lindsay, cousins and once lovers; Milo, the strange vital boy who looks for gods and finds one inside himself . . . There are some problems that arose before we came on the scene and will continue after we have left, but one problem perhaps Vereker can solve: his own. When the time approaches for him to return to America he knows that things will never be the same for him again.
March House
The arrival of a mysterious new psychiatrist at March House, the psychiatric clinic where Ruth works, heralds the collapse of her entire world. Dr Laver is flamboyant, vulgar, possibly even unethical – but he starts Ruth on an uneasy journey through the past, in which she glimpses her parents for the first time as separate people, in which her wholesome country life seems filled with madness and pain, and in which the happy childhood she thought she had crumbles away to reveal something quite different. In the characters who compose Ruth’s world – her cousin Hilda, her mother, he father’s woman friend Eleanor, the mad old lady Miss Maud – the author displays all her characteristic wit, and her deep understanding of human motivation.
The Bright Day
On the night Neil Moray is returned as Independent MP for the seaside town of Scotney, William Lomax, editor of the local paper, has a visit from a woman with an unsavoury tale to tell about Moray’s campaign manager, Rodney Cope. Much has been made of Moray’s personal integrity and his determination to clean up Scotney, and it seems plain that the woman, estranged wife of the unsuccessful Conservative candidate, is unbalanced. Nonetheless Lomax takes a hard look at the set-up in Moray’s camp. The development of the West Front is a major issue and a suspicion persists that Cope may have a special interest in it . . . Then the woman who started it all is found dead. While sunbathers luxuriate in a heat wave and children queue for donkey rides on the sands, Cope, Moray and Lomax move towards a violent climax, set among police sharpshooters, television cameras and holidaymakers.
The Mind Has Mountains
Tom Norris has problems of his own, and chief among them is: who is he? It is a time of general stress and strain, for Tom is Assistant Education Officer to the South Sussex Council, and the County Hall, long threatened by wind and rain on its bleak headland, is about to meet its destruction at the hands of a Boundaries Commission. Where can its strange and unnerved inhabitants find another refuge? While Tom pursues his quest for identity and purpose, he reluctantly takes into his office Phoebe Huber, and otherwise rejected member of staff whose meek manner conceals a formidable gift for subversion. Tom begins by feeling sorry for Phoebe, but chaos is her natural element and she is better qualified than Tom to live in it. As little by little she takes possession of him, the South of England is hit by one of the worst blizzards in living memory. The snow blots out the familiar landscape, order breaks down both inside and outside the County Hall, the boundary between reality and fantasy grows indistinct, the wolf returns to the hills.
The Meeting Place
Today I saw the strange woman again. For I am sure this poor ghost is, in fact, a woman. It is true she is dressed as a man, though no man I ever saw dressed in quite this fashion . . . When Clarice Mitchell arrives at an isolated farmhouse to rehearse a production of Pericles, she leaves the well-charted country behind. Entering a world as mysterious as the unregulated, unpredictable moorland, she finds herself in odd company and on the verge of strange discoveries. Who is the middle-aged woman in Victorian costume who watches her. And the wild-haired girl first glimpsed standing in a moorland pool and later on a journey? Why does the shadow of a priory long since gone still fall across the farm where Clarice is staying, and where once her old headmistress used to stay? As the stories of these unusual women interweave across the centuries – disturbing stories of violence and witchcraft, passion and prejudice, during the Wars of the Roses, in stifling Victorian England and in the present day – one woman has to come to terms with the impossible choices of the past.
He Who Plays The King
As a child of seven, Richard of York, the future King Richard the Third, watched an even younger child coping determinedly with a large boarhound. Never again was Richard to have so clear a view of Henry Tudor, who, twenty-six years later, was to cost him his crown and his life at the Battle of Bosworth Field.
Mary Hocking tells a story of kingship and king-making, of the entrenched rivalry between the houses of York and Lancaster, and of the lives of these two young claimants to the throne. Richard, a man of sharp wit and formidable energy, was a vigilant, unrelenting king, with little gift for friendship and only meagre support outside his native North Country. Henry, too, made no bid for popularity. He had learnt early on to expect little of life, and during his years of exile he remained patient, forbearing, yet shrewdly calculating, until the opportunity for action came.
The ‘integrity’ of Henry, the ‘villainy’ of Richard and the mystery of the Princes in the Tower are reassessed in this absorbing novel, which creates a sense of history through convincing portraits of the men and women who made it. Mary Hocking has written not only a record of the last dramatic years of the Wars of the Roses but also a perceptive study of the trials and triumphs of human ambition.
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