The White Lady by Jacqueline Winspear
If you are short on reading time, I suggest putting The White Lady (Harper) on top of your TBR pile! For all faithful Maisie Dobbs fanatics, this latest historical novel by best-selling author Jacqueline Winspear is not part of that series. However, The White Lady is a must read work of fiction that will not disappoint.
It features a protagonist named Elinor White, also known as Elinor De Witt, in a gripping, suspenseful story full of surprises that is as captivating, finely crafted, carefully plotted, beautifully written and engaging as any of the author’s previous works.
The story begins in England in 1947 with flashbacks to both World War I and II revealing the backstory and relating Elinor’s harrowing experiences as a resistance fighter and wartime operative. She has sustained tremendous personal losses without time or resources to properly grieve them. Combined with memories of her field work, she has been left hollowed-out, haunted, fraught with survivor’s guilt and no longer really caring if she lives or dies.
In today’s terminology, she would be diagnosed as someone suffering from PTSD. She is alone, isolated except for work contacts, civil yet icily remote and not one who invites overtures of friendship or engages in casual conversation. Elinor, The White Lady, is a slightly younger contemporary of Maisie, highly intelligent, resourceful, fond of children and bravely involved in fighting forces of evil in both world wars but the similarities end here.
Exploring a Dark Time in British History
London, along with other major cities and towns in Great Britain, had been bombed nightly for eight months during the worst of the Blitzkrieg (The Blitz or lightning war) by the Luftwaffe (German Air Force). One could not escape the bleak evidence of the devastation; flattened blocks, blackened skeletal remains of residences, shops, factories and office buildings. Some remnants of these bomb sites would endure until the 1970’s.
Unexploded bombs called UXBs and other munitions presented a continuing danger and removal squads toiled at this hazardous work for years after the war ended. As recently as 2021, a 2200 pound WWII bomb was discovered and safely detonated. When six years of devastating warfare came to an end after untold sacrifices and at an enormous cost to both military and civilian lives there was heady jubilation and riotous revelry in the streets of cities and towns across Great Britain.
The initial celebrations soon turned to disappointment for the war weary populace as shortages of food, housing, clothing and other everyday necessities including soap and cereals continued. Long hours were spent queuing up for scarcer purchases. Rationing of many goods and services that began in 1940 would not be lifted until 1954. Limits on gasoline purchases were so severe that journeys over 90 miles could not be done legally. The black market that flourished during the war continued until rationing abated.
Post-war organized crime increased dramatically with armed thugs involved in “smash and grab” jewelry heists (much like what has been happening in the San Francisco Bay Area in recent months), a marked increase in shoplifting gangs, bank robberies, and doping scandals at horse and dog race tracks.
Some of the less then honorable demobilized servicemen returning to civilian life in a depressed economy found it easier and more lucrative to commit crimes than to find legitimate work. Desperate for troops, the military had accepted convicts and older juveniles from reform schools released in order to enlist and serve.
Jacqueline Winspear wrote in a recent newsletter, “a good number of those boys brought home weapons found on battlefields. Lugers from German prisoners were particularly sought-after. The American military force left a lot of goods behind when they returned home — from Harley Davidson motorbikes, to guns, to blankets and canned food. It didn’t take long for the discarded weaponry to fall into the wrong hands.”
The Life of a Resistance Organization Veteran
Elinor White is known as “the quiet lady” in the village of Shacklehurst, 80 miles distant from the bustle of London. She owns a small flat in London, bought near the end of WWII but lives in a “grace-and-favor” estate home with a large garden. This sort of residence can range from city flats to royal palaces owned by the monarch that are leased out rent free or rent reduced for the life of the recipient in gratitude for services rendered to The Crown.
In addition to this home, groceries and necessities are delivered weekly from London and she receives official visitors from the city regularly. She presents an enigma to the villagers who respect her wish to be alone but speculate about what sort of work a woman in her early 40’s would have done to earn this obviously substantial pension from “a grateful nation”.
The majority of the gossips concur she must have been a favorite lady-in-waiting. They could not have imagined she was a veteran of both world wars. Her espionage work began when she was recruited at age 12 in Belgium in 1916, along with her mother, Charlotte, and older sister Cecily, to the British funded resistance organization named “La Dame Blanche” or The White Lady by a woman known only as “Isabelle”. This clandestine group, comprised of girls ranging from preteens to elderly women, was actively engaged in resistance work gathering intelligence, working as saboteurs and, when necessary, trained assassins.
The DeWitt family as they were known in Belgium was particularly useful in espionage activities for their fluency in several languages. Elinor’s father Thomas Dewitt was Belgian and her mother English. He was already involved in the resistance in 1914 when he was captured and presumed to be killed by the German occupying Army.
The girls had attended a British Academy Convent school where they continued to study English. They spoke Flemish (Dutch), French and German, the three languages of Belgium, and had been taught Italian. Cecily was the more reluctant of the daughters to become a spy but Elinor was eager, resourceful, observant and an apt pupil who quickly became a deadly accurate marksman. “The three musketeers” as the little family dubbed themselves were eventually, by necessity, spirited out of the country to England where they remained.
Elinor spent the interwar years in Paris and returned to London shortly after WWII was declared. It was not long before she was recruited as a Special Operations Executive (SOE) field agent. This British secret organization was involved in “irregular warfare” which included scouting, spying, and sabotage in enemy held lands.
Readers will be enthralled by her cool courage and the details of her involvement in both wars. Elinor remains involved in intelligence work suspecting corruption at high levels in Scotland Yard. The Cold War has already begun and there are moles and suspected communist spies in government. This is a foreshadowing of the real-life Cambridge Five who have been passing secrets to the Soviets for years but not exposed until well after the setting of this novel.
Melancholy Elinor begins to thaw as she becomes acquainted with Sally Mackie, an enchanting toddler with blond hair and big blue eyes and a wide smile. Her parents Jim and Rose are neighbors who fled from London to escape Jim’s family’s world of organized crime. The intrepid Miss White becomes determined to take on his father, a ruthless crime boss, to keep this little family safe.
Impeccably Researched, Beautifully Written Novel
The plot is absorbing, entertaining, exciting and, as one expects from Jacqueline Winspear, beautifully written and impeccably researched. The author became an instant fan favorite with the 2003 debut of her compelling series Maisie Dobbs. This County of Kent English born American transplant can’t write fast enough to suit her avid fans and we have to make do with her informative and enlightening monthly newsletters. Her work is deservedly multi-award-winning, best-selling and a frequent selection for book clubs.
If you have read all of her work and impatiently wait for more, I would recommend books by Susan Elia MacNeal, Pam Jenoff, and Kate Atkinson among others. The White Lady would make a great film or television series. Please be sure to visit the author’s website at https://jacquelinewinspear.com/ for news and updates, essays, newsletters and information about her previous books.
Interview with Jacqueline Winspear
Conducted by Linda Hitchcock Via Email Exchanges
LKH: After 21 books, the 17 Maisie novels, the standalones and 2 nonfiction, what may we look forward to reading next? Will there be a second volume to your memoir of your childhood and family? (Please.)
JW: Oh gosh, that’s a big question. I loved writing The White Lady, but I confess, I put a lot into it emotionally, so I’d ready for a break! Having said that, I have already started work on another novel in the Maisie Dobbs’ series. I also have a new series in mind that I’d love to work on – much lighter fare (I think). I’ve had it in mind for some years now – I mull things over for a long time, but it might be time to start. I’ve another non-series novel I’m itching to write, plus I’d love to work on the sequel to The Care and Management of Lies. Yes, I have that story in my head too! No more memoir at this point, though I certainly have the material!
LKH: Was there an inspiration for Elinor White? (In This Time Next Year We’ll be Laughing) you talked about a reserved neighbor from childhood who lived in a grace-and-favor home.
JW: Yes, that neighbor was without doubt the initial inspiration for the story, and indeed, even as a child just knowing what she had done in the war was something I thought about a lot. I had a favorite game I played with my pals along the disused railway line close to my home. I’d plan the game where we were resistance operatives, spies running from the Nazis. Everyone became very bored with that game after about half an hour, except me – my imagination could take me a long way along that railway line and through the woods! Of course, my later curiosity about women’s roles in wartime, together with research for (in particular) my novel, A Lesson in Secrets added to my desire to write about Elinor.
LKH: Could you describe for your American audience what a grace-and-favor residence is and who might receive this benefit?
JW: A “grace and favor” home was traditionally one given to a person who has served “King/Queen and Country” in some role, as a mark of the monarch’s gratitude. The home would be given to them upon retirement, and they were at liberty to live in the property rent free or with just a “peppercorn” rental amount for the rest of their lives. The type of employee eligible became fairly broad – from a beloved lady-in-waiting, to a palace Head Gardener, to a long-serving politician – or someone like Elinor, who served her country in a time of war.
LKH: What were the organizations “La Dame Blanche” and Special Operation Executives?
JW: While I was in the midst of background research for A Lesson in Secrets, the 8th novel in the series featuring Maisie Dobbs, psychologist and investigator, that I read the book Female Intelligence: Women and Espionage in the First World War by Dr. Tammy Proctor, and learned more about “La Dame Blanche” — the White Lady — network comprising chiefly (but not exclusively) girls and women who were engaged in resistance operations following the German invasion of Belgium in WW1. From preteens to elderly women, they would take on tasks from intelligence gathering, to sabotage, and if necessary, assassination.
The organization was bankrolled by the British from a Secret Service base operating in the Netherlands. It fell to girls and women to assume much of the work, because males not already away in the Belgian army – from boys on the cusp of manhood and upwards in age (they ignored the very elderly men) – were taken away by the Germans and either shot or sent to work camps.
The organization was named “La Dame Blanche” because the fall of the Hohenzollern dynasty — from which the Kaiser was descended — was said to be heralded by the appearance of a woman wearing white. I loved playing with the name “White” for Elinor’s family, because it’s what drew the women into engagement with La Dame Blanche.
The Special Operations Executive (SOE), was a secret British WW2 organization formed to spearhead and conduct acts of resistance in enemy-occupied countries. Following Winston Churchill’s instruction to “set Europe ablaze” the Minister for Economic Warfare, Hugh Dalton, founded the SOE. Unlike other secret service organizations, SOE recruits came from all walks of life and social classes – not just the elitist private schools of Britain. They became known as the “Baker Street Irregulars” (the main HQ was in Baker Street, London), and the “Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” by other government entities.
In books and films, the “F” section, operating in France, tends to get more attention; however, Belgium was one of the most dangerous of the occupied countries. Only two women were ever deployed to Belgium – and of course in creating Elinor, I made it three with a drop of artistic license! One of the reasons for the danger was a strong pro-Nazi element operating in the country.
I should add that having seen the work of the SOE first hand, the Americans became interested in how they operated, and in time founded their own Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which later became the CIA. Interestingly enough, the first woman to join the SOE in London was an American, Virginia Hall.
About twelve years ago I bought a book on the SOE produced by the British government in the years following WW2. Inside was a small collection of letters and press clippings – the letters were from a man who objected to the way in which his friend, one of the women of the SOE, had not been given her due and who he thought was represented poorly. He was furious. The letters were to the press and government, and the subsequent clippings were from the press response.
He succeeded in getting the book reissued with fresh information. It was when I turned to the first blank inside page that I realized the book had in fact belonged to that man who fought for his friend’s “honor” – it gave me the shivers.
But here’s something to add to the story. I bought that book in a used bookstore in Rye, East Sussex – my parents lived in the area and it’s one of my favorite towns. Rye is close to the small town of Winchelsea, which coincidentally was the home of Vera Atkins, who was to all intents and purposes the deputy head of the SOE’s French Section.
I am sure there was a connection between the man who owned the book and the legendary Miss Atkins. After WW2, Atkins made it her business to locate the remains of 51 unaccounted-for agents who perished at the hands of the Nazis.
I used to spend a lot of time in Winchelsea when my parents were alive – well, the walks nearby are lovely and there’s a great pub in town – and often wondered if I had passed her on the street, though it’s a quiet place.
LKH: How did you construct the complicated plot in The White Lady with its three timelines?
JW: It was an exercise in weaving and braiding! I knew the key scenes that would take place in each chapter, so I wrote them on index cards, and for the first time ever I “storyboarded” the events on an easel, moving those cards around until I was happy with the narrative arc. However, those cards were like pins in the construction of a tailored garment – they could be repositioned to account for any movement in the fabric of the story. I didn’t want anything to be prescriptive, instead to flow like two streams into a river which moved on toward the conclusion of the story.
LKH: The White Lady is a stand-alone but might there be a future Elinor White novel exploring her involvement in the Cold War espionage?
JW: I don’t think so. No plans at this point.
LKH: Elsie Mackie Finch is an underestimated force to be reckoned with and a marvelous featured character in The White Lady. Do you have any comments about the prevalence of female led shoplifting gangs in postwar Great Britain?
JW: I don’t have any comments per se – but they certainly existed then and they exist today. Especially in postwar Britain, the most law-abiding people would often be the grateful recipients of apparel stolen by highly organized women shoplifters. My mother had a gorgeous couture suit when I was in my early teens – it was so elegant, and she was a tall woman so could carry it off.
Needless to say, the garment’s original price was way beyond anything she could ever afford, and when it was offered to her by a “friend of a friend of a friend” she knew it had “fallen off the back of a lorry” (as the saying went). Yet it was so cheap, that even my law-abiding mother couldn’t turn it down, though she guessed that the friend of a friend of a friend was what was known as a “receiver.”
LKH: How do you conduct your research? How much comes from memories shared by your parents and extended family?
JW: Well, I don’t have spies or members of organized crime gangs in my family, so a lot comes from both Primary and Secondary research. Primary has been more tricky since Covid, but it’s the time I spend walking the streets where I set scenes and in person going through historical archives etc. I have a mound of background details already in place from twenty years of writing the Maisie Dobbs’ series. I’ve walked former battlefields in Belgium and France, and I’ve spent hours at the Imperial War Museum, for example, so that’s all information in hand. The Secondary research is basically books (many very old) and archived films.
The key with research, though, is how you use it – and I’m a firm believer that as a writer of fiction, I have to be very careful and use the information I’ve garnered as if I were using spices in soup. If I sprinkle too much, it’s like putting a speed bump in the narrative – I’m a storyteller before everything else and I’m writing fiction. As a rule of thumb, I believe research should be like an iceberg – only 7% visible above the surface.
LKH: I always hear this question at author talks. Thus, how long does it typically take you to complete a new book from conception, research to writing? Do you have the entire work structured and outlined in advance or does it evolve gradually as with your memoir?
JW: All my work has evolved gradually. I can be mulling over a story for years before I start to write. I really don’t need to do a ton of research now – I have so much already in my head, though there are always details to discover along the way. From the time I begin, it probably takes four solid months of work to get the first draft down.
In his book “On Writing” Stephen King says that if you write 1200 words each day, you can lay down your first draft in three months. I don’t write at the weekend, so I take a bit longer, though some days I write 700 words, and some days, if I really want to get to the end of a given scene, I will write a few thousand. I don’t have a structured outline – never, as it would not allow me to “dance with the moment” so to speak. I would say I have an idea of where I’m going, scenes/events that I write toward, but no more than that.
LKH: Who were your favorite authors growing up? What authors and/or books influenced you? Whose work are you reading now? Do you prefer fiction or non-fiction for your own reading? Did you have mentors when you first began your writing career?
JW: My favorite authors growing up were Jane Austen, Emily Bronte, Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, John Steinbeck, and of course I then moved on to some blockbusters! I absolutely loved Susan Howatch – a really inspiring writer, who wove stellar academic research into novels that were compelling, had a depth of inquiry and were enormously entertaining.
If I listed every author I love to read, this list would take up pages upon pages! In my very early years I read the “Jill’s pony books” by Ruby Ferguson. I don’t think they were a thing here in the USA, but for a horse-mad girl, books such as “Jill Has Two Ponies” and “Jill and the Gymkhana” were just wonderful to wallow in, usually while I was hiding in a tree so I couldn’t be found to do my chores!
I’m a voracious reader of both fiction and non-fiction – pretty much like most writers. I can’t say that I had any true “mentors” though I’ve loved attending workshops in memoir and the personal essay – because I love the way it’s possible to weave the personal with the universal. I’ve never taken a class in fiction (I’d find it too intimidating, and probably never write fiction again!), but I’ve really loved writing non-fiction – in fact, I think I’ve learned everything I know about writing from the study of creative non-fiction.
LKH: What are your favorite banned books?
JW: I can’t answer this one as I’ve never paid attention to whether a book has been banned or not. In this age of the internet, trying to ban a book is a pretty daft thing to do. I just read what I want to read, and if I have trouble getting a book I’ll always find a way. I’m a research nerd – I can find out almost anything. I think the banning of books is beyond stupid, beyond narrow-minded, and of course it’s always done by people who want to control others and as an adult, I will fight back at any attempt to control my mind. When I was a kid, my parents would never have “banned” me from reading a book – though they might have suggested I wait another year or two!
LKH: How young were you when you realized you were a writer?
JW: About five years of age. I wrote about it in my memoir.
LKH: What lessons have your books taught you?
Writing my books has taught me not to be afraid. Actually, it was the accident I had shortly after starting to write Maisie Dobbs that taught me not to be afraid of sending out my manuscript. I’d had an awful riding accident, and finished the novel through my convalescence (I hated the thought of not having anything to show for myself after three months of being pretty much stuck at home).
When I’d finished the first draft, I bought Jeff Herman’s book on literary agents, editors etc., and came up with ten agents who I thought would be interested in a work of historical fiction set in wartime. When a friend asked me if I was scared sending out the packs I’d prepared (no emailing of manuscripts then), I replied, “What were they going to do? Chase me up and crush my other arm?”
Yes I think writing my books has taught me not to be afraid to try something new creatively.
LKH: How do you balance your time commitments between your personal life and your work; the research, writing, marketing, author talks, personal appearances and your wonderfully informative newsletters? Do you still find time to ride?
JW: If I didn’t ride I wouldn’t be able to do everything else. My time with my horse, training in the equestrian sport of dressage is important to me on so many levels. People who ride know that when you are with your horse, that’s where your head has to be, because the horse knows if you are off thinking about something else – and particularly with dressage. When I am writing a new novel (and I also write articles and essays on assignment), I have a very structured day, and being with Calvin – my horse – after I’ve finished writing, is a non-negotiable part of that day. It clears my head and warms my heart, ready for whatever comes next.
LKH: What do you like to do when you are not writing or doing research for a new book project?
JW: Reading, hiking, riding my horse, hanging out at the barn where I ride. I love indie movies in particular, and we have a great indie movie theater in town. I love to travel (I’m off to Namibia in October, tracking elephants), plus I enjoy just hanging out doing not much at all.
That’s a new thing, and my brother has been an enormous inspiration for me. From an early age we were raised to be hard workers – it’s what we know, and if you’ve read my memoir, you’ll have read about that aspect of my childhood. But a few years ago my brother had a bit of a heart scare and it changed his life. Yes, he still works every day and is incredibly productive in work which is creative yet physically demanding, but he scaled back the pressure, and if he wants to come home early to mess around with one of his classic cars, that’s what he does. Sometimes now I stay longer at the barn, just hanging out with Calvin and my pals out there, instead of rushing home to check my emails before the end of the day!
LKH: What would you like people who have not yet read your work to know about your writing?
JW: That I write from the heart. It’s the only way to write – from the heart.
LKH: Will Maisie Dobbs become a film soon or is the project still in development?
JW: Tricky one to answer – I think “watch this space” might be the best response!
LKH: Will your next work be fiction or nonfiction?
JW: Fiction.
LKH: What questions do interviewers fail to ask you?
JW: Fortunately, the ones I wouldn’t want to answer!
