The novel flits back and forth between the viewpoints of the different characters, bringing them thoroughly to life with their own distinct voices that often had me laughing out loud with their freshness and vivacity. The novel touches on the lives of all the residents of 10 Dulcimer Street, with a number of sub-plots intertwined throughout, but there is no central character or single continuous plot. Even the two characters who seem the most ludicrous comic relief are given intensely moving deep POV and powerful story elements. These diversely ordinary people living at the same address, the other people whose lives they touch, all with their different desires and motives, It's a terrific read for an historical novel.

At its best the book is a directed but unforced tour of aspects of British – English – culture during wartime: a world of “chimney pots and telegraph wires”, of Bakelite and green baize, of séances and boxing matches (“The Tiger entered the ring in his celebrated striped dressing gown, allowed his seconds – two bullet-headed thugs like escaped convicts – to disrobe him as though he were too well-bred to do that kind of thing for himself, and stood there, like a cockerel, turning himself about for the people to admire him”), and of Lyons’ Corner Houses and miserable London weather, where “it was as though someone had deliberately smeared a wet dirty cloth across the sky”. Collins paints an exquisite lyrical cameo of the young couple (Doris and her not-quite-fiancé-yet Bill) in a flaming, sparkling sunset at Waterloo Bridge, thirty years before the idea occurred to Ray Davies.It drives Roman mad when I talk about turning our home into a boarding house should I ever end up as a widow.

It’s the people who make it the exciting place it is, who challenge each others’ preconceptions and if that isn’t always comfortable, it never stops being interesting. I too read this wonderful book as a teenager and it’s one of a handful of books that have remained forever in my memory from those days. pulp novelist’; it’s most definitely not a ‘war novel’ – the war, insofar as it impinges on the lives of the characters, happens largely off stage, although some of the casualties spill onto the page. Sidney Gilliat however says Earl St John asked if Gilliat could use one of Rank's contract stars like Pat Roc, Margaret Lockwood or Jean Kent; Gilliat chose Roc as he had worked well with her on Millions Like Us. Dulcimer Street, se11, could be regarded as the novel’s central character, though it is darling old Mr Josser – the man on the tram rather than the Clapham omnibus, who cries when he retires from his job as a lowly but loyal clerk in the City – who provides the book’s continuity.

An honest navvy or a coal heaver, however well paid, simply wouldn’t have been allowed across the threshold. This is a book that you really can’t let pass you by – it’s pure reading indulgence and I can’t recommend it highly enough.