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1965: Travel back in time to the dark underbelly of the Swinging Sixties
Miss Treadway & the Field of Stars
What you need to know before your trail
Soho, 1965.
In a tiny two-bed flat above a Turkish café on Neal Street lives Anna Treadway, a young dresser at the Galaxy Theatre.
When the American actress Iolanthe Green disappears after an evening’s performance at the Galaxy, the newspapers are wild with speculation about her fate.
But as the news grows old and the case grows colder, it seems Anna is the only person left determined to find out the truth.
Her search for the missing actress will take her into an England she did not know existed: an England of jazz clubs and prison cells, backstreet doctors and seaside ghost towns, where her carefully calibrated existence will be upended by violence but also, perhaps, by love.
For in order to uncover Iolanthe’s secrets, Anna is going to have to face up to a few of her own…
Travel Guide
The Sixties in London
London has, since time immemorial, been the haven for the rich and poor, but the bright lights attract the best actresses and stars for this is theatreland. Those with nothing come to see if the London streets really are paved with gold.
The Swinging sixties was a time of freedom and celebration of a kind but only if you were white it would seem. Any one else who came to the city, immigrants included would not see the London portrayed by games of cricket and the bright shining lights but rather the underbelly as evoked in Charles Dickens novels. Ottmar who runs a coffee shop finds his new city more of a stranger than a welcoming friend. The central characters of the story are all immigrants of one nationality or another, whether it be the Irish policeman in the Met, the Jamaican accountant, Ottmar,and indeed the American actress Iolanthe Green.
The background to this time and place – this was the swinging sixties with the music, the jazz clubs in Soho and the fighting between Mods and Rockers.
The time is also evoked in greater detail with mention of the climate of fear created by the Moors Murders. But it’s the inherent racism of the time which reveals so much about the real sixties. As much a landmark in this London as the clubs of Soho
Streetview Maps
B) London - Edith Cavell Statue
D) London - Soho - Ronnie Scott's
Booktrailer Review
Susan: @thebooktrailer
This is quite a novel. Never before have the swinging sixties been so clearly and cleverly evoked. I’m not old enough to have lived through this time but now I genuinely feel I have! It read like memories, like a faded photo of another time. The nuances and the feel for the detail, the delight and the shadows are just so brilliantly woven into a mystery of a novel.
But this isn’t just a mystery – it’s a look at what London and the sixties was like – a look at the many different nationalities and ‘classes’ who met there. There’s that famous phrase by LP Hartley “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there. How apt for this novel!
And the central plot is the mystery of the missing actress but like in often the case of a mystery set in the world of theatre, it’s the action just off set, in the wings that proves to be where the spotlight really lies.
This is a multilayred novel with a lot of goodness in it – the mystery of the actress kept my interest to the end but it’s the journey to that destination that’s the real gem here.
Booktrail Boarding Pass Information: Miss Treadway & the Field of Stars
Author/Guide: Miranda Emmerson Destination: London Departure Time: 1960s
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