People at Play

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London, 1960s.

With the city still reeling from the effects of the Second World War, its inhabitants are trying to live life as it comes.

Stanislaus Spolianski, the housekeeper’s son, is an underdog full of resentment.

Seething in his Bayswater house, he lets out rooms to people he delights in despising.

Eternally pig-in-the-middle, Stani is emotionally tossed between High Pines – a residential home for the elderly run by Mrs Bannister and his mother – and his beloved Bayswater home.

High Pines seethes too, as unease stirs among its residents.

Miss Della has returned to London, having once ran off with a German prisoner of war.

And little Lucy, the gardener’s daughter, is now fifteen, her newly found sexuality and teenage rebellion breaking the precarious bubble in which they all live.

Facing an ever-changing world in which death strikes at every corner, it seems at High Pines that the only certain thing they can all rely on is the cherished family of waxen, antique dolls that reside on the top floor…

People at Play deftly portrays, with both cynicism and sensitivity, the great displacement felt in post-war Britain.

Praise for Elizabeth Berridge

‘Berridge displays an unerring ability to delicately distilling character into a single sentence… Elegance and economy’ – New Statesman

‘Her wry, sly, iconic awareness has never been shown to greater advantage’ – Spectator

Elizabeth Berridge was a novelist and critic. Born in London, where she was partly educated here, she later moved to Geneva. Berridge won the Yorkshire Post Novel of the Year Award, in 1964 for Across The Common.