Nonesuch

It’s 1938 and Iris Hawkins is a Smart Young Thing who’s not from old money and takes her climb into London’s financial world Very Seriously Indeed. For larks, she seduces hunky young men, but when she relieves lanky, geeky BBC television technician Geoffrey Hale of his virginity, he goes all gooey-eyed for her. This is quite annoying for Iris initially, but becomes positively irritating when a shadow monster tracks her from Geoff’s house to her workplace in the city.

Turns out Geoff’s dotty dad used to be part of London’s esoteric community (Order of the Golden Dawn, anyone?) and even though most of the moth-eaten manuscripts and occult paraphernalia piled up in his cluttered Hampstead Heath home are balderdash, it does seem like some of it is, well, on the money. Iris, drawn further into Geoff’s world on the basis of self-preservation, finds that, dash it all, despite herself she’s growing sweet on the gawky boy. Awww ...

But then the bally war begins. And then the Blitz begins. And, drat it, just as Iris and Geoff are getting the hang of the whole swooning-into-one-another’s-arms business, it appears that upper-class English fascists (read: twits) have also gained access to the magical world and are keen as mustard to use it to deliver England into Mister Hitler’s grasping mitts … Blimey! Will Iris and Geoff need to delve further into Geoff’s father’s mouldering archive to save the day? Looks like it!

Scads of stiff upper lips and flurries of getting-to-know-you sex decorate this jaunty fantasy set against a burning, terrified, stoic London. The vehemence of the magical war matches the violence of the material one, and all the while grimy, perky young women uniformed as ambulance drivers and air raid wardens struggle grimly to keep their beloved city alive. Tally ho.