Life and relationships under spotlight before the internet

JAMES Farnham’s novel, Bayeux, will take readers back to the Henley area in the Sixties.

The author, who has spent most of his career working in and around the Thames Valley, now lives in Milton Abbot, Dorset, but says he was “born and bred in the Thames Valley ”.

“I grew up in Cookham, and I lived in Marlow and Bisham and then I spent a lot of time in Henley with a sister who lives there. That was all for the first 15 years of my life, I guess,” he says.

“I used to go to Henley very frequently, two or three times a month for quite a few years. I rowed there a few times because that used to be a sport of mine.”

The 58-year-old, who is divorced with two grown-up children, says he has been “coy” about mentioning specific places “out of respect”. He says: “I grew up in the Thames Valley near Henley in the Sixties and saw some things a child should never see at some of the outrageous parties that raged in that era.

“It was a fast-living, highly intoxicated time populated by some exotic characters — people in television, sport and members of the establishment. They were mostly in their forties or fifties at the time and may still be alive, so out of respect it seems only fair not to point to any precise locations in the area — best to present the story as fiction, which of course it is.

“It’s not very specific, so for example in one of the scenes there’s a journey from the little branch line that goes on to the main line into Paddington.

“That could just as easily be Henley as Marlow but very much in terms of the Chalk Hills sitting above the Thames Valley and trips into town, it’s definitely along that stretch and I think anyone knowing the area would recognise this: ‘the little branch line that joined the main line into Paddington had been spared in the Beeching cuts’.

“There will be many local people who will remember what it was like living in and around Henley during the Sixties. Bayeux will bring back memories of what it was like to enjoy the bustling of the town by its famous stretch of river, the commuting in and out of London and the endless parties many people held in their homes.

“Reading the novel will enable people to reminisce about how different everything was then, in a world without internet and mobile phones and when every restaurant and railway carriage was full of cigarette smoke and people rarely swore in public.”

However, says James, the novel contains light and shade. “Bayeux is not merely a rose-tinted view of the past, because it deals with family joys and tensions that are universal and timeless, such as the complex power play within families — between mothers and teenage daughters, and how parents choose to navigate their domestic responsibilities — who looks after the children, who earns the money, who runs the house.

“The story also has added complexities such as the impact of child adoption on family dynamics and the unsettling effects of toxic patriarchal influence.

“The action focuses primarily on Elizabeth, who has spent nearly 20 years trying to forget the trauma she experienced in Bayeux after the D-Day landings when she was forced to give up her child for adoption.
“When we get to the main story in 1967, Elizabeth’s comfortable family life with her daughter Helena is disrupted by being hurtled back into the buried past she has tried to conceal from everyone.

“It is only through her own resilience and Helena’s precocious ingenuity that they both find happiness in the end.”

The Swinging Sixties became famous for ushering in dramatic changes between the generations. “It was a very interesting time in that you still had the throwback to the post-war rationing days. I think a lot of readers will remember that cusp between the old world and the new and it really was, in terms of ‘doing the right thing’, a very stuffy time in some quarters.

“Obviously, with the arrival of ’67, things were starting to be turned on their head. So, Elizabeth, the main protagonist, is hanging on to some of the old values but is actually ahead of the time in bringing up her own child, Helena.

“She is recognising that times are changing and doesn’t want to stifle her daughter’s development by being too much rooted in the old world.

“So, that’s very much the backdrop to the family drama itself, navigating the wider world but at the same time there is the minutiae of daily life in the family and the little conflicts that happen at breakfast.”

Readers can augment their experience by visiting the website, which has links to music which is referenced in the book, as the character of Helena is a cello player. James says that the book is available in physical format only, in support of local bookshops. He adds: “I’m not naturally contrary but I do tend to zig when the rest of the world is zagging.

“There are people who are keeping that tradition alive, so I thought it would be nice. I’ve been into the Bell Bookshop in Henley a couple of times and they’re great in there. They are a key local stockist and they are able to order more copies at a day’s notice from their wholesaler.”

l Bayeux, by James Farnham, is available from the Bell Bookshop in Henley now, priced £9.99. For more information, visit bayeux.blog