Birdcage Walk: A dazzling historical thriller

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The lime trees trained over the footpath leading to the site of the former church offer a choice of the names "Lime Walk* and "Church walk. Dunmore has managed to bring life into characters that existed (or some have) in real life, with such intensity that makes you forget yourself, all set into motion from a small script on a headstone! If The Siege is an example of everything a good book should be, this is an example of everything it shouldn't. Of course, this is how people in England would have received the news, so in that sense it's an accurate portrayal.

It is is set in Leningrad during the first year of the siege of the city by German forces, which lasted for 880 days from the fall of Mga on 30th August 1941. It has been a long journey and perhaps some members may wish that a decision could have been made earlier, but, while the condition of the building imposes some urgency, it is also important that we pursue a course of action that is widely supported, and which is the right one for the Institution’s future. Personally, I think this book was in desperate need of a good edit; the dialogue was repetitive and the conversations too long and full of uninteresting comments I couldn’t care less about. I would like to take the opportunity to thank Patrick and the group for investing so much of their time to take a thorough and professional approach. In Westminster, a walkway named Cockpit Steps, running south of Birdcage Walk, marks the former site of royal cockfights.

As Dunmore explicitly acknowledges in a very interesting afterword, one of the key themes to her writing, and what gives it its power, is her ability to tell of great historical events or upheavals from the point of view of those who are integral to events but whose voices have vanished or been marginalised from the historical record: the inhabitants of Leningrad under siege ( The Siege); the family of Cold War spies ( Exposure); Doctors caught in Stalin’s purges ( The Betrayal). I have read several earlier novels by Helen Dunmore, and so was interested in reading this latest novel of hers. A quiet novel, yet buzzing with life, Birdcage Walk is a landmine of a tale on the human experience.

Well developed characters and a unique perspective kept my interest; even though the plot doesn't show up in the first half of the book.And yet, for all her indifference to politics, she too is constrained by circumstances beyond her control, bound into marriage at a time when a wife was her husband’s legal property. The two strongest options were the sale of 8-12 Old Queen Street and 3 Birdcage Walk, consolidating the headquarters in a newly refurbished 1 Birdcage Walk; and the sale of the entire building and a move to freehold or leased premises elsewhere in London.

This to me is the main interest in the book along with the lovely relationships between Lizzie, her mother, Thomas, Hannah and Philo. These included retaining and refurbishing the entire Birdcage Walk estate; sale or lease of the freeholds, including 8-12 Old Queen Street and 3 Birdcage Walk; sale of the entire site and a move elsewhere in London; a move elsewhere in the UK; and a wholly virtual Institution. The wood and metal range of paints, available in matt (8% sheen), eggshell (23% sheen) or gloss (80% sheen) finishes are suitable as both interior paints or exterior paints.I just allowed myself to be enveloped in Dunmore's lyrical language and careful psychological observation. Like the second Mrs de Winter in Rebecca, Lizzie wonders if she can live up to Lucie’s place in Diner’s memory. Also of worthy note, Lizzie takes her mother's child, Thomas, to care for him on her own after the wet nurse he is given into the care of, neglects him and he "fails to thrive" in addition to developing scabs and infections due to "being left in his own dirt" in the care of an 8 year old child. When Diner invites Lizzie down to the cellar beneath their house, it is snowing outside (Dunmore’s affinity with winter is well known) and we are filled, as Lizzie herself is, with reasonable foreboding.

It is a beautiful place and also, on a winter night when rain thrashes down and light flickers through the cage of iron and lime branches, a place to make the living catch their breath, and hurry on. This is no murder mystery but, just like the revolution across the Channel, the scene casts a shadow over everything that follows, suffusing the novel with an uneasy menace. Set in Bristol, England at the end of the 18th century, during the French Revolution, we are introduced to the cast of characters in Helen Dumore's memorable book, of small people with great ideas. So, we almost have a bildungsroman here, as she grows and changes in small ways throughout the book. The Guardian believe it to be 'a blend of beauty and horror evoked with such breathtaking poetry that it haunts me still'.And the plot, although a little slow in the middle, is laced from start to finish with an underlying feeling of despair and a real, palpable bleakness as the ongoing drama, social strife, economic uncertainty, marital tension, and increasing violence unravels. There is an atmosphere of Hardyesque unease as a man rows from Bristol to a glade where he has left his dead wife overnight.