The Fortnight in September

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And Sherriff simply allows his characters to be. He doesn’t hurry them along on the way to be something or somewhere else. He just gives each and every one of them their moment, gently and serenely, letting these modest people – who wouldn’t dream of imposing on you – share the hopes and dreams that they keep precious and secret even from each other. We see the way that grown-up children begin to gain a broader sense of the world, and to shape the futures they want for themselves. We see the quiet, unspoken, nostalgic anxiety of parents whose adult offspring are beginning to slip the bonds of family. And we see the extra earnestness with which family occasions are treated as a result, always from the fear, which is best unspoken, that this time might be the last. These are things which chime with familiarity: the careful keeping of Christmas traditions, for example. Dress codes on the beaches change, but families don’t, not in their essence, and it’s the essence that Sherriff captures here. His novel has the cosy domesticity of the Diary of a Provincial Lady, but without the barbs, or Barbara Pym if she strayed into the suburbs. The “Seaview” guest house where Mr and Mrs Stevens stayed there on their honeymoon is shabbier than they remember it from their last visit. The linoleum flooring is worn bare in some places, the bedroom curtains frayed at the edges and the sitting room exudes a “faint, sour atmosphere, as if apples had been stored in it.” The widowed proprietor Mrs Huggett isn’t as cheerful as on past visits; now she looks drawn and maybe a little tearful. Mrs. Stevens almost gives up her annual bottle of port citing its expense, but Mr. Stevens insists she buy it, and she relieves her conscience by considering how it was recommended by her doctor as medicinal. Later in the novel, we learn that the hour she spends drinking it alone each night is the one part of the holiday she truly enjoys. Why do you think she feels obligated to justify this small pleasure? How have traditional roles for wives and mothers shaped her sense of duty to prioritize her family’s happiness over her own? To what extent do these gendered pressures exist today? Only youngest son Ernie is oblivious to the down at heel nature of the accommodation. At 11 years old he’s too excited by the idea he could become a railway porter one day or — better still — the bandmaster of a military band, The others accept the discomforts of Seaview because they enjoy the comfort of familiarity too much to think of going elsewhere. Regrets and Desires

Sherriff, Robert Cedric (1962). The Wells of St. Mary's. Hutchinson Library Services. ISBN 0091174406. OCLC 7185868. The Fortnight in September opens on the evening before the family departs, at their house in the South London suburb of Dulwich, where Mrs. Stevens, who has lived there all twenty years of her married life, awaits the return of her husband and two eldest children for supper. To begin the story here, on this night of family celebration—second only, in their eyes, to the excited anticipation of Christmas Eve—is a small stroke of genius. For the Stevenses, this evening, pregnant with expectation, sometimes feels like “the best of all the holiday, although it was spent at home and the sea was still sixty miles away.” Journey's End - the 2007 Broadway revival won the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Revival of a Play On rainy days, when the clouds drove across on a westerly wind, the signs of fine weather came from over the Railway Embankment at the bottom of the garden. Many a time, when Mrs. Stevens specially wanted it to clear up, she would look round the corner of the side door and search along the horizon of the Railway Embankment for a streak of lighter sky. De Stevensen halen hun voldoening uit routine, niét uit avontuur. Een onverwachte ontmoeting is geen verademing, eerder een verzoeking. Een ongeplande uitnodiging veroorzaakt geen voorpret, maar onderhuidse stress. De bagage bestaat voornamelijk uit mantels der liefde, waarmee kleine akkefietjes discreet worden bedekt.Sherriff was nominated along with Eric Maschwitz and Claudine West for an Academy award for writing an adapted screenplay for Goodbye, Mr. Chips which was released in 1939. [22] His 1955 screenplays, The Dam Busters and The Night My Number Came Up were nominated for best British screenplay BAFTA awards. [23] Work [ edit ] Plays [ edit ] Yet now, as she busied herself with the supper, as she lifted the saucepan lid and forked the boiling beef, she was happy—almost elated at the unexpected sunlight of the evening: happy because the holiday brought such joy to the others. She looked forward to their coming home this evening: bursting to be off next day, yet reluctant to leave home now that it had become for one night the anteroom to freedom.

The Fortnight In September. The two weeks when the Stevens family left their South London home for their annual holiday, by the sea in Bognor. His 1936 novel Greengates is a realistic novel about a middle-aged couple, Tom and Edith Baldwin, moving from an established London suburb into the then-new suburbs of Metro-land. [21] Award nominations [ edit ] Sherriff wrote his first play to help Kingston Rowing Club raise money to buy a new boat. [13] His seventh play, Journey's End, was written in 1928 and published in 1929 and was based on his experiences in the war. [3] It was given a single Sunday performance, on 9 December 1928, by the Incorporated Stage Society at the Apollo Theatre, directed by James Whale and with the 21-year-old Laurence Olivier in the lead role. [14] In the audience was Maurice Browne who produced it at the Savoy Theatre where it was performed for two years from 1929. [15] The play was hugely successful and there was wide press coverage which reveals how audience responses provoked by this play shaped understanding of the First World War in the interwar years. [16] Novelist [ edit ] Arriving in Bognor they head to Seaview, the guesthouse where they stay every year. It’s a bit shabbier than it once was—the landlord has died and his wife is struggling as the number of guests dwindles every year. But the family finds bliss in booking a slightly bigger cabana, with a balcony, and in their rediscovery of the familiar places they visit every year.

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Again Mrs. Stevens peered out. If only the rain would stop! The whole holiday would be damped if they were cheated out of this first evening—sweet because it was stolen: because it was not, officially, a part of the holiday at all. Mr Stevens, the most prominent figure in this novel, consoles himself at the end of the fortnight of his family’s holiday with counting the months until next year, and by pondering on the things to look forward to until then: Christmas, evenings in the garden while the weather is still warm, catching up a half hour of daylight after work in the spring. I find myself fending off the Melancolie in Settembre (old Italian song of Peppino Di Capri) in pretty much the same way, so it seems that self-defense mechanisms remain unchanged throughout time. Harmonie staat voorop en waar een moderne auteur die al snel vakkundig om zeep zou helpen om voor de nodige dramatische spanning te zorgen, draagt Sherriff er nauwgezet zorg voor dat elke rimpel geruisloos wordt gladgestreken. I can't imagine reading this book any other way! I read about the characters excitement for the holiday ahead, as I was excited for my own. I finished it as the characters were saying goodbye to their seaside town, as I'm saying goodbye to my own! Trewin, J. C. "Sherriff, Robert Cedric". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (onlineed.). Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/ref:odnb/31678. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)

But...perhaps this is only because it is a book of its time (published in 1931), and written by a man, but I found how R.C.Sherriff handled the interior life of his wife very poor. The book is mostly from Mr Stevens' point of view, while we are let into the heads of the other characters now and again, but all Mrs Stevens is allowed to think about is how her husband's resignation as secretary of the football club was accepted, whether the buns she's bought for the family are too stale, how scary it is changing trains at Clapham Junction, and so on. Towards the end there's a tiny glimpse about how she is happy to have an hour on her own in the evenings without anyone, but I really think there would have been more going on inside Mrs Stevens' head than buns and trains. But, that issue aside, I still loved this book. The Fortnight in September was a very brave book to write because it was not obviously ‘about’ anything except the ‘drama of the undramatic’. And yet the greatness of the novel is that it is about each one of us: all of human life is here in the seemingly simple description of the family’s annual holiday in Bognor. Thus, for reasons we do not have to explain to regular Persephone readers, this is a book which fits fairly and squarely on the Persephone list. A quietly powerful family novel, The Fortnight in September dives below the surface of everyday life to explore marital roles, parent-child relationships, financial troubles, class differences, nostalgia for the past, and hope for the future. It’s an ultimately uplifting story about the parts of ourselves we keep secret and the small pleasures we share with those we love.Sherriff, R. C. (1968). No Leading Lady: An Autobiography. London: Gollancz. pp.14, 22. ISBN 0-575-00155-0. Proprio non ricordo come questo libro sia finito nella mia wishlist e da lì prima o poi inevitabilmente approdato alla lettura: sconosciuto il titolo, altrettanto ignoto l’autore che mai avevo sentito nominare, poco allettante la sinossi, nessun consiglio di amici, probabilmente si è trattato di una recensione galeotta che prometteva troppo. Our dance with life is encapsulated here within the framework of an annual family vacation in the early 20th century at the English Seaside. There’s nothing like tradition to measure the passage of time, both reliable in its regularity and separate enough from the daily grind to compare the choices we’ve made with what lies ahead. There’s also the ritual itself in all of its ceremony, and how we improve our preparation and navigation of it each time. This story moves us into those moments when we teeter on that line between the desire for known comforts and for that of something new. Since it is the father, Mr. Stevens, who is central, it is in his middle-aged rhythm with its small shifts that we mostly experience our read. The journeys of the two eldest children come later, breaking the rhythm and sweeping us into more dramatic change. But even those are the ordinary dramas of first times. Robert Cedric Sherriff, FSA, FRSL (6 June 1896 – 13 November 1975) [1] was an English writer best known for his play Journey's End, [2] which was based on his experiences as an army officer in the First World War. [3] He wrote several plays, many novels, and multiple screenplays, and was nominated for an Academy Award and two BAFTA awards. [4] Early life [ edit ]

After recovering from his wounds, Sherriff worked as an insurance adjuster from 1918 to 1928 at Sun Insurance Company, London. [9]The Fortnight in September follows a family of five on their annual holiday to the seaside town on the coast of England. Mr. and Mrs. Stevens have stayed at the Seaview guesthouse every year since their honeymoon two decades ago. While many things have remained the same over time, much has also changed. Only the honeymoon had been lovely: the coming of the children had made the fortnight a burden—sometimes a nightmare. At home the children were hers: they loved her: came to her in everything. At Bognor, somehow they drew away from her—became different. If she paddled, they laughed at her: saying she looked so funny. They never laughed at her at home. Wales, Roland (2016). From Journey's End to the Dam Busters: The life of R.C. Sherriff, Playwright of the Trenches. Barnsley: Pen & Sword. ISBN 978-1473860698. A captivating read. . . . quietness is part of the novel's immense charm." — Laurie Hertzel, Minneapolis Star Tribune The foreword to this book is an excerpt from R.C. Sherriff's autobiography, wherein he discusses how he wrote The Fortnight in September. He had had a marvelous success as a playwright with Journey's End: Play, but then he had an idea which he could only turn into a novel: the simple story of a family on their annual seaside ho