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Farewell Leicester Square by Betty Miller
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Farewell Leicester Square (original 1941; edition 2000)

by Betty Miller, Jane Miller (Introduction)

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1054257,542 (3.45)14
A 1935 novel by Jonathan Miller's mother about a young film-director and his encounters with anti-Semitism. Preface by Jane Miller.
Member:bunnyb
Title:Farewell Leicester Square
Authors:Betty Miller
Other authors:Jane Miller (Introduction)
Info:Persephone Books Ltd (2000), Edition: New edition, Paperback, 320 pages
Collections:Your library
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Tags:Persephone Books

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Farewell Leicester Square by Betty Miller (1941)

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Betty Miller wrote ‘Farewell Leicester Square’ in 1935 but it was rejected at first no doubt due to the sensitive subject matter of anti-Semitism and the sense of disappointment which pervades the novel. The book final finally appeared in 1941. Betty Miller was a young wife and mother when she wrote ‘Farewell Leicester Square’ but she must have been aware on some level at least of what was happening in Germany at this time, and this novel must have been her response to the Jewish experience as she saw it in England.
In Farewell Leicester Square we meet Alec Berman, who succeeds in his ambitions to make it in the British film industry. The novel opens on premier night of Berman’s film ‘Farewell Leicester Square’ - a film which epitomises his work, and comes to be his greatest success. The story then returns briefly to Alec’s teenage years in Brighton, one of three siblings in a Jewish family that expects him to join his father in the family business. Alec’s father is disparaging of his ambitions – ultimately throwing down an ultimatum that results in Alec leaving Brighton for London – and not seeing his family for seventeen years.
Alec is ambitious and as a sixteen year old he contrives to meet Richard Nicolls owner of the Ladywell film company at the Nicolls home in Rottingdean. Their home and the life he glimpses there seems to represent for him the world from which he feels excluded, but which he longs to be a part of.
“Their gaze passed him over, up and down, idly; without interest or curiosity. Then they continued on their way as though nothing were. Walking together without speaking: at one in their natural intimacy. Moving with unconscious assurance of young animals under the sun. Alec looking after them as they went, felt down to the roots of his being the contrast which emerged between himself and them: and it was at that precise moment, for the first time, that something new, the sense of racial distinctness, awoke in him …. A sudden knowledge of the difference between these two, who could tread with careless assurance a land which was in every sense was theirs; and himself, who was destined to live always on the fringe to exist only in virtue of the toleration of others, with no birthright but that of toleration.”
Fourteen years later Alec is a success, and he finds himself married to Catherine, the daughter of Richard Nicolls. The marriage is over shadowed however by Alec’s over awareness of himself – he constantly examines other people’s attitude to him and his Jewishness – he suspects even his wife of looking down on him. Viewing himself continually as an outsider impacts upon Alec’s whole life, and his relationships. Alec’s preoccupation with how he is perceived begins to look a little like paranoia – as he begins to push away the only people who really don’t have any issue with his race.
This is the sort of novel which has people crying ..”but nothing much happens” – well nothing much does happen – the novel is an extremely good examination of middle class English life, ambition and the small almost invisible acts of anti-Semitism that exist there. There are some large gaps in the story of Alec and his career as a film maker – but in a sense that doesn’t matter – the story is much more about Alec Berman’s view of himself, and the way that in striving to make the sort of life he for himself that he has always wanted, he does in fact lose something of himself. Alec is not a character I always felt able to sympathise with, in a way he pushes the reader away in the same way he pushes his wife away.
Miller’s writing is excellent. She slyly exposes petty everyday racism that is of course in fact far from petty, it’s destructive; in Alec it breeds a kind of paranoia - which blights his life. Miller’s portrayal of both middle class English life and the suffocating limits of Alec’s family home in Brighton is brilliantly done.
“There are some things, he thought, which one would remember always. The smell of those rooms in Landsdowne Road. Coming in out of an unbounded night – the sea, hedged between green-sleeked breakwaters, surging with prolonged thunder upon the empty clattering stones; and the lights all along the front, blown, winking before the breathless night-riding winds – to find this immured warmth: solid, motionless. To stand, eyes dazzled, flesh still ringing from the exterior cold, before this quiet room, warm with the accumulated fires of winter and the intimate life and breath of human bodies, with gaze as bright and alien as that of some animal come momentarily out of another existence. And conscious of course, of his own voluntary isolation; of this new priggish desire of his to rupture the dull bondage of flesh making him one with these people.”
Such writing – in my opinion - deserves recognition, and I am glad Persephone books saw fit to re-issue it. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel – and although it won’t be my favourite Persephone novel – it is one I am very glad to have read and it certainly makes me want to read more of Betty Miller’s work. ( )
3 vote Heaven-Ali | Jun 15, 2013 |
Persephone is famous for publishing out-of-print, lesser-known classics, but there’s a sub-theme to their list as well: they reprint a number of Jewish authors (Marghanita Laski, Amy Levy, for example). Farewell Leicester Square is the only one of Betty Miller’s novels that touches on the Jewish experience in England. This story focuses on a man named Alec Berman, who manages to rise to fame in the film industry (the opening scene of the novel is centered on the premiere of one of his films, Farewell Leicester Square) and marry a non-Jew.

From the way I saw the book described, I though that this was going to be a straightforward and pretty typical story. But Betty Miller turns it around a bit, by making the anti-Semite Alec himself. He’s so aware of his background as a Jew and not wanting people to mention it that he almost becomes a bit self-hating of his Jewishness He even tries to stamp out his childhood in Brighton in order to become more English and is denigrating of his brother’s wife and children. It’s because of this awareness, which pervades the whole tone of the book, which eventually brings about Alec’s downfall. The relationship between Alec and his wife Catherine is tough to read; it’s not clear if there really was a lot of love between them, or if each of them loves what the other represents. I think they both jump into the relationship without considering the implications.

The plot and pacing of the novel are, as the introduction to the novel, set out a bit like a film, with flashbacks and the like to indicate the passage of time (it’s not done so well, however; there are huge gaps that made me want to know what happened in between Alec’s apprenticeship and the film premiere). It’s an incredibly brave novel for Betty Miller to have written, especially at that time period. ( )
1 vote Kasthu | Feb 2, 2013 |
The message of this book was interesting, and yet the book itself was not because the story was secondary to the message. I hate that. Through the life of a Jewish filmmaker, the author discusses the problem of racism from both sides--the majority, who are either stereotypically racist or trying to act as though they aren't racist; and the minority, who have become so fanatically attuned to presumed discrimination that they can no longer lead normal lives. The protagonist tears himself to shreds with rage at everyone around him, and finally drives away even those truly untainted by racism. It's not a subject that interests me, since I'd rather everyone just stop talking about it and be themselves without fussing so much, but I suppose the author did a decent job of addressing a touchy issue.
1 vote kdcdavis | Feb 27, 2011 |
"Two of Miller's works, Farewell Leicester Square (1941), about anti-Semitism in London, and On the Side of the Angels (1945), about gender relations in wartime, have been reprinted—the former by Persephone, the latter by Capuchin (and by Virago in the 1980s)—and both are lovely and well worth reading. Unfortunately, these two other novels—A Room in Regent's Park (1942) and The Death of the Nightingale (1948)—published around the same time have not been so lucky and are out of circulation in U.S. libraries and virtually impossible to find for sale."

- adapted from here (along with a list of other buried WWII-era female novelists in Britain)
  proustitute | Apr 2, 2023 |
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Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
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Miller, JanePrefacesecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed

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A 1935 novel by Jonathan Miller's mother about a young film-director and his encounters with anti-Semitism. Preface by Jane Miller.

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"And who has the place now?" Catherine was looking at him... "Oldwood?" she said, replying to his question...."Heaven knows. Oh! yes - some awful dago, I believe."
A sudden familiar shock went through him. The careless contempt in that expression... Me, she means. Dago: Jew: Outsider...Unconsciously, she had made a thrust at his pretensions, at his emotional preoccupation with her. She might just as easily have said "Some ghastly Jew..." He could anticipate the scene. Her sudden violent flush, Oh, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean - And then the usual smoothing over. Of course, you're different. Or else: Some of my best friends are Jews...They always said that. And one was supposed to be humbly grateful, quite bowled over, in fact, by the astonishing thing. Jews, just fancy! Some of my best friends are chimney sweeps, performing seals. Oh Lord. Their tolerance. Their damned shallow self-satisfied tolerance!
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