This book can be described as an 'oblique memoir'. The central underlying and repeated themes of the book are exile and displacement; lives (and deaths) during the Third Reich; mother-daughter and sibling relationships; the generational transmission of trauma and experience; transatlantic reflections; and the struggle for creative expression. Stories mobilised, and people encountered, in the course of the narrative include: the internment of aliens in Britain during the Second World War; cultural life in Rochester, New York, in the 1920s; the social and personal meanings of colour(s). It also includes the industrialist and philanthropist, Henry Simon of Manchester, including his relationship with the Norwegian explorer, Fridtjof Nansen; the liberal British campaigner and MP of the 1940s, Eleanor Rathbone; reflections on the lives and images of spinsters. The text is supplemented and interrupted throughout by images (photographs, paintings, facsimile documents), some of which serve to illustrate the story, others engaging indirectly with the written word. The book also explains how forced exile persists through generations through a family history. It showcases the differences between English and American cultures. The book focuses on the incidence of cancers caused by exposure to radioactivity in England, and the impact it had on Anglo-American relations.
1.2 ‘Little
patients in the gardens of the country branch of the Royal
National Orthopaedic Hospital at Brockley Hill, Stanmore,
Middlesex.’
1.3 ‘A
corner of the ultra-violet ray clinic at Bethnal Green, showing
children undergoing treatment. The patients come from large
families, living in one room.’
1.5 Before
and after photographs of a child’s legs with rickets, treated
with heliotherapy for two years, detail.
1.6 Before
and after photographs of a patient suffering from multiple
tuberculous lesions, treated by heliotherapy and
balneotherapy.
1.9 ‘A
glimpse of Hayling’, Treloar Hospital’s seaside branch on
Hayling Island, undated.