The Slaves of Solitude

In 1943 an ill-assorted group of lodgers in a boarding house a few miles outside London are eking out a wartime existence in safety (they hope) from the trauma of the Blitz. The are joined unexpectedly by two wayward and pleasure-seeking GIs and an attractive German-born lady, who divides opinion. At the centre of the plot is Miss Enid Roach, approaching middle-age and rootless. Hamilton cleverly links the vastness of devastating world events with the pared-back lives of the residents thrown against their will into a different form of strife.