Margaret Kennedy was a novelist and playwright, most famous for her
second novel The Constant Nymph (1924). She was born in London on
23 April 1896, the eldest of four children, and holidayed with her
family in Cornwall for years. Margaret read history at Somerville
College, Oxford. Her brother Tristram was killed in 1918 fighting
near Jerusalem.
Margaret graduated with the equivalent of a second-class degree in
history in 1919 (the year before women were allowed to take their
degrees at Oxford). In 1923 her first novel was published, The
Ladies of Lyndon, which received little attention. While she was
working on this book she had gone to Pertisau on Achensee in the
Austrian Tyrol to stay with friends, and discovered a passion for
mountains and walking. It also gave her a setting for her next
novel, The Constant Nymph, and she returned to Pertisau to finish
the novel.
The Constant Nymph was widely acclaimed, and Margaret received
congratulations from the leading literary figures of the day,
including Thomas Hardy, George Moore, A E Housman and Arnold
Bennett. She married in 1925, and had three children. In the late
1920s the family bought Hendre Hall, a large house in Llwyngwril
near Barmouth on the North Wales coast, which was their holiday
home for many years.
In 1937 David Davies became a County Court judge, while Margaret
had become a leading literary figure. With the approach of war
Margaret's health began to deteriorate due to emotional stress. By
the middle of 1940 the family had left Hendre Hall for a brief stay
in Surrey, and then Margaret and the children moved to St Ives with
Nanny, while David remained in London. Margaret visited London
frequently for committees and to see her husband, and eventually
moved her children and Nanny out of their rented home into a hotel,
which made her housekeeping much easier. In 1943 she and the
children and Nanny left Cornwall, for James to go to prep school
and the girls to go to Oxford High School. In July 1944 their
London house was completely destroyed by a VI flying bomb. They
moved into a new home a few streets away, at 11 Argyll Road, where
the family stayed for fourteen years.
In 1947 Margaret visited the USA for the first time, and began
writing a new cycle of novels, and an acclaimed biography of Jane
Austen. More critical writing followed, accompanied by increasing
deafness. David Davies was knighted in 1952. His death in 1964 was
a great blow to Margaret. Her health continued to deteriorate, and
she died in 1967 aged seventy-one. Faye Hammill is Professor of
English Literature at the University of Glasgow. Her specialist
areas are modernism and the middlebrow, periodical studies, and
Canadian literature. She is author or co-author of six books, most
recently Modernism's Print Cultures (2016), with Mark Hussey;
Magazines, Travel, and Middlebrow Culture (2015), with Michelle
Smith; and Sophistication: A Literary and Cultural History (2010).
She is founder of the AHRC Middlebrow Network.
"This is a journal of the tense months between Dunkirk and the
start of the Blitz – months when a German invasion of Britain
seemed both imminent and inevitable. It’s written with a steady
intensity; raw worry pokes through the elegant prose, and though
there are many vivid details, and moments of wit and levity, this
is also an extraordinary meditation of what it means to be free in
a world of encroaching tyranny." — Lissa Evans, author of Old
Baggage, V For Victory"Margaret Kennedy’s skill as a writer is in
evidence throughout this memoir." – Bookword"For anyone
interested in women’s writing or the experiences of those on the
‘Home Front’ during the Second World War, Where Stands A Wingèd
Sentry is a gem waiting to be discovered amongst the growing list
of titles published by Handheld Press." – What Cathy Read
Next"These diaries are a beautiful combination of bleakness and
fear, paired with everyday things and the general hilarity which
can be found in small daily stories." – Ninja Book Box's March
Books of the Month "Beautifully
produced." – Shiny New Books "Kennedy’s powers of
observation and her sense of the absurd made me laugh out loud …
Kennedy writes brilliantly about the way that every day life
somehow continues even in times of great stress and anxiety.’ – A
Reading Life
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