I am absolutely delighted to be welcoming author, Francesca Capaldi, onto the blog today. Francesca's latest book, Celebrations at the Beach Hotel is publishing in the UK today. Here she will be talking about changing times for men and women, and I can't wait to hear what she says.
The Blurb
Sisters Alice and Annie have always been close but will a man come between them?
Annie and Alice love their life working at the Beach Hotel together and each is thrilled to have finally found a sweetheart. Yet the path of true love never did run smooth, and they soon find themselves facing conflict and strife. Could love come between them and the bond they share?
Meanwhile, as men start to come home from the war, the women have to work out how to keep their jobs, although they are delighted to be back with their beaus. Soon, wedding bells ring out in Littlehampton.
Will everything be made right in time for Christmas?
Welcome to the blog Francesca. Over to you.
Let me introduce you to characters Annie and Alice Twine, two sisters in their early twenties who work in the scullery at the Beach Hotel in Littlehampton during World War 1. They’re looking forward to all the men coming home from the war, but two men in particular.
Once the war was over, the men who’d been fighting didn’t return immediately but did so over the next few months. This is reflected in Annie and Alice’s story. Although the sisters remained working in the scullery during the war, quite a few of the women at the hotel had taken over the men’s jobs as porters and waiters, and even as manager in Helen Bygrove’s case. This would have been the case all over the country in factories, offices and on the land.
This was a period when women must have started to feel a real sense of freedom, doing jobs normally reserved for men. While I’m sure most women would have been missing their fathers, husbands etc, there must have been some sense of relief for them, now they could make their own decisions.
In Celebrations, the men at the hotel return in dribs and drabs, and it’s not until March that the two men Annie and Alice like get back to the hotel. Lorcan and Jasper were in a battalion whose part in the battles had ended in October 1918, but they were required to stay another five months for a clear up and salvage mission, which is what their battalion did in real life. Other men at the hotel came home after them, having been sent to the Russian/Finnish border where trouble had been breaking out.
A lot of men, although relieved to return, must have wondered what they were coming home to. They were now years behind the cultural fashions. Music had changed, as had dancing. The women would have looked very different in their shorter, straighter, less fussy outfits, more practical for the jobs they’d now taken on.
Women’s football, already around for a long time, had really taken off during the war, due to the Football Association stopping men’s matches after the 1914/15 season. After this time, more men went to war and were conscripted in 1916. In the Beach Hotel books, Gertie Green is a keen football player and joins a team. This encourages derision from some of the men when they return, especially as the media at the time declared it an unhealthy pastime for women. The men’s football league resumed in August 1919. Worried by its popularity, the FA finally banned the women’s league in 1921, so women were no longer allowed to play on their grounds, instead having to go to parks. The ban wasn’t lifted until 1969.*
When the men return to the hotel in Celebrations, there is naturally some resentment against the women who took on their jobs, especially as some retain them, like Gertie as head porter (or portress, as they would have been called). In reality, not many women did keep these jobs. A minor character, Amanda Lovelock, is sacked by the police and returns to work at the hotel, and it was the case that many women were dismissed from the police force after the war.
Overall, women who had gained freedoms during World War 1, lost them. However, proving their worth at this time went a long way to them gaining something important – the right to vote, if, for now it was only for women over 30 who owned property.
Let me finish with some words from the usually stern housekeeper, Mrs Leggett, who surprises the female staff in a discussion with the men by siding with the women…
‘I agree with Miss Green and Miss Twine, and the rest of the women who would like to see women’s football continue. If the war proved anything, it is that women are equal to men in skills, even if they are still not equal in law.’
‘But they have the vote now,’ Stanley persisted.
‘How many women around this table are able to vote yet? Hands up,’ said the housekeeper. ‘There you are: none… And I, for one, hope that the women’s football goes from strength to strength.’
‘Thanks, Mrs Leggett,’ said Gertie, looking genuinely touched.
Annie gave Mrs Leggett a big smile, to show she approved of the housekeeper’s words, and Mrs Leggett smiled back.
*You can read more about women’s football and the impact of World War 1 on it here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zjxywty )
Book Details
ISBN: 978 1804368497
Publisher: Hera
Formats: e-book, audio and paperback
No. of Pages: 384 (paperback)
Series: Book 6 in the Beach Hotel series
Purchase Links
About the Author
Francesca Capaldi has enjoyed writing since she was a child, largely influenced by a Welsh mother who was good at improvised storytelling and an Italian father who loved history. She is the author of historical sagas, short stories and pocket novels.
The first novel in the Beach Hotel series, A New Start at the Beach Hotel, won the Romantic Saga Award at the Romantic Novelists' Association Awards in 2024. The first novel in the Wartime in the Valleys series, Heartbreak in the Valleys, was shortlisted for the Historical Romantic Award in the RoNAs in 2021.
Francesca was born and brought up on the Sussex coast, went to London to do a history degree, but has lived for many years in Kent with her family and a cat called Lando Calrission.
You can also find Francesca at:
(media courtesy of Rachel's Random Resources)
(all opinions are my own)
(Bookshop.org affiliated)
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