Liz Harris

Oxfordshire, 1919

The instant that Lily Brown and Robert Linford set eyes on each other, they fall in love. The instant that Robert’s father, Joseph, head of the family’s successful building company, sets eyes on Lily, he feels a deep distrust of her.

Convinced that his new daughter-in-law is a gold-digger, and that Robert’s feelings are a youthful infatuation he’d come to regret, Joseph resolves to do whatever it takes to rid his family of Lily. And he doesn’t care what that is.

As Robert and Lily are torn apart, the Linford family is told a lie that will have devastating consequences for years to come.

* * * * *

I’ve always believed that a story set in a particular period of time should grow out of the history of that period, and that the history shouldn’t be used as a mere backcloth for a story that could have happened at any time, in any place. For this reason, my research into my chosen period is of paramount importance when it comes to constructing my plot.

Having set three novels in Wyoming, and two in India, and with two books set in Italy, I decided that the time had come to root myself firmly in England, and to approach a period in which I’d always been interested, but had never yet set a novel – the two decades between the wars.

The Dark Horizon, the first in the Linford series, is set between the end of 1919 and 1933, and takes place in several different locations.

Some of the research was easily done as I’d located the Linfords in places relatively close to my current home, which is South Oxfordshire, and also in or near Hampstead, the area in London in which I was born. Robert and Lily lived at the top of Hampstead, near the Heath; Joseph and Maud lived in Primrose Hill; Thomas and Alice were in Kentish Town, which is home to a library in which I worked one summer many years ago. Charles lived slightly further away in Knightsbridge, bringing with it the glamour of Harrods, which employed me a long time ago while I was waiting for my US visa.

I wanted the Linford family to have a weekend retreat, and as the Cotswolds could be reached at the weekend by those who lived in London, Chorton House came into being. Despite much driving in the area, punctuated by pub lunches, I was unable to find the house that matched the house of my imagination, and had to settle for building Chorton House out of my head.

I realised that the Linfords would have to drive around or be driven, especially when they went to Chorton House for the weekend, and I spent two very pleasant afternoons in The British Motor Museum in Banbury, tracing the history of the car.

1923 Austin Seven Chummy. Probably Austin’s most famous car, it could carry 2 adults and 2 children.

1923AEC S-type bus. The bus could carry 54 passengers, making it the largest bus running in London.

Around the walls, the visitor can see depictions of the key inventions of that time.

There was also a focus, as there would be, on the developments relating to roads and traffic.

However, The Dark Horizon isn’t limited solely to London and the Cotswolds, and wanting to know more about all my locations than my many research books could tell me, I made the ultimate sacrifice of going to New York for three weeks in order to research Lower East Side, Manhattan.

By the beginning of the 1920s, immigrants were pouring into Lower East Side. Tenement apartments had become sweatshops, in which families worked alongside each other, finishing the bundles of clothes that had been passed to them by local factories, work for which the families were paid a pittance.

In the heart of Lower East Side, Mulberry Street, 1900.

Inside the cavernous Immigration Centre on Ellis Island.

Katz’s Delicatesson, where That scene in ‘When Harry Met Sally’ was filmed.

Shimmel’s Knish Bakery has been selling knishes since 1890.

The situation was to change in the late 1920s and early 1930s as a result of the Immigration Act 1924, which restricted immigration to the US. The Act put in place measures that were designed to exclude most of the Italian, Eastern European – hence Jewish – and other Southern Europeans, and Lower East Side was to take on a very different complexion.

During my time in New York, I thoroughly immersed myself in the history of my chosen period, and gained a real feeling for the life of immigrants in the 1920s. For this, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Museum of the City of New York and to The Tenement Museum, in particular.

The Museum of the City of New York, on 5th Avenue.

The Tenement Museum on Orchard Street.