Posted by Andrew Craig-Bennett on August 07, 2003 at 16:57:16 from 195.93.32.8 user ACB.
In Reply to: Intrusions of Real Life posted by Peter Ceresole on August 07, 2003 at 15:46:34:
Well spotted - I had missed that - probably because, since I sail out of the Deben and into Harwich rather often, the one remaining mast (preserved) is an everyday sight for me.
Now, about the Great Depression - SA was written, I think, before the Wall Street Crash, but there is, to me at least, a slight wiff of escapism about PD and SD which might reflect the conditions of the day. This tone seems to have gone by WH, CC and PP, though.
By 37 the Depression was over, and to quote a letter written in that year by the builder of my boat, then half finished, having been promised for May, to her first owner, making the usual excuses (cf SD, SW and PM!) "The Navy are buying everything and driving prices up!"
But the books are set amongst the children of the middle classes and the skilled working classes in comfortably off parts of Britain.
By and large I fancy that the 1930's, if you were in the middle classes and had a job, were a pretty good time - as witness the stupendous amount of housing development that went on in those years.