The Real Mrs Miniver: A Biography

by Ysenda Maxtone Graham

Book Overview

In 1937 the Court Page of the London Times began publishing a series of articles featuring a charming, upper-middle class English housewife named Mrs Miniver. The articles depicted an idyllically happy family with three children, a house in London, and a country cottage called Starlings. Two years later, Mrs Miniver was published in book form. While some critics derided the book as sentimental, many readers embraced it as a symbol of an increasingly...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312308264
• ISBN13: 9780312308261
• Release Date: November 2002
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.13 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.7" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Shut Your Eyes And Think Of England

This book rips the lid off the conventional pieties about what it emans to be an Englishwoman, and shows how Hollywood and the media can take a person's life and thoroughly rearrange it to a disorienting degree; it's an easy task, especially if the person in questions cooperates up to the hilt. In these days of reality TV, I often think back to this pioneering biography of Joyce Maxtone Graham, written by her grandddaughter with an eye nicely balanced between the too fond and the too cold. Today we see real people going on TV seemingly eager to give up all their identity just so long as they stay in the camera's eye. What Joyce did was something rarer, particularly for the 1930s and 1940s. She started out life with a little girl's talent for drawing and writing little stories and poems. Marriage occupied her for awhile, and motherhood, but eventually nothing could hold her back, once she began writing the "Diary" of Mrs. Miniver, an imaginary Englishwoman whose life had roots in her own, but which was considerably idealized and romanticized. It started out small and then got big--too big to handle. Ysenda Maxtone-Graham, the biographer, gets considerable mileage out of the juxtaposition of Joyce's enormous personal ambition with the developing chaos in Europe which would lead to England's valiant defense against Hitler in the 1930s, and how the two combined to give England a new (and fictional) heroine, Mrs. Miniver, the character everyone thought was real! Hollywood called, Joyce went, she sold an outlandish number of war bonds, but actually she was deserting her native land in time of need, driven mostly by an unseemly passion for a fellow anti-Fascist refugee. Love knows many avenues, of course, but reading the book you just can't help but think that her paramous was probably the worst thing ever to happen to her! However she would look on it differently, and that, perhaps, is the difference between living one's own life, no matter even if it's a muddle, and reading about it in the safety of your own library. Ysenda Maxtone Graham tells this sad story with an easy flair and a sympathy for all concerned, especially those bamboozled by Joyce's prison of lies. I hope she continues to unearth more about her illustrious ancestor or, if the well is dry, to move on to another lonely soul.

Delightful even if you never read Mrs. Miniver

The Real Mrs. Miniver is a biography of Jan Struther, the author of the 1940's classic, Mrs. Miniver, as told by her granddaughter. Even though she never met her grandmother, as a member of the family, Ysenda Maxtone Graham, had access to journals, letters, and family stories that really bring life to this biography. The book Mrs. Miniver began life as a series of essays that appeared in the London Times in 1938 and 1939 on the everyday life of a happily married upper-middle class woman living in London. As the war in Europe approached, these essays took on a deeper meaning describing what England was fighting to preserve and the hardships the British people were willing to endure. They were collected into the book and became a best seller in the United States. Jan Struther spent the war in the US promoting the British cause through lecture tours and radio appearances.This biography shows the difference between the ideal married woman, Mrs. Miniver, and the real troubled life of Jan Struther. With loving detail, we see how she deals with a marriage that has lost its spark and a clandestine affair. In a sense this biography is a Mrs. Miniver for the 21st Century. Where the fictional Mrs. Miniver has a sexless, but loving marriage, in this book the real Jan Struther struggles with her sexual relationship with another man while she is being promoted as the ideal of British womanhood. How she resolves this complex war-time situation makes compelling reading.This is a book that portrays the war years in a very human way through the life of a woman who was held up as an ideal at the time, but whose real life is a model for our generation of human frailty and the strength needed to over come it. Included are sample sections from the book Mrs. Miniver and many of Jan Struther's poems which are delightful.

eye for detail worthy of Struther herself

This excellent biography of Joyce Maxtone-Graham, better known to readers as "Mrs. Miniver" of World War II-era fame, is written by a granddaughter, Ysenda. Although she never knew her famous grandmother, Ysenda has captured the essence of this talented, complex woman whose writing captured the hearts of millions world wide. "Mrs. Miniver" was, of course, an invention, an upper middle class English woman whose wisdom, fortitude, and compassion in the face of adversity personified what the British liked to think of as "our way of life." The extremely successful movie, produced by William Wyler and starring Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon, is still rented, and shown on the classic movie stations. Joyce Maxtone-Graham was very different from Mrs. Miniver: Part life-long tomboy, part buoyantly happy wife (in the early years of her marriage anyway), part sharp-eyed observer and part lazy and sensual mistress, Joyce is a complex character brought richly to life in this book. The genius of her writing lies in attention and enjoyment of small things: Her description of a happy union is "an eye to catch across the table." Ysenda Maxtone-Graham is to be commended for her own attention to the small matters that make up a rich life, with its full texture of joys and sorrows. This excellent book will provide you with a full understand of "the real Mrs. Miniver." Five well-deserved stars!