The final section of Pigtails and Pernod takes place during the summer holidays of Simona's second year at drama school, at a time when the English community in Dieppe was diminishing in the years leading up to war. Families were returning to England, 'colonels were cutting down on their drinks...Marie was getting fewer orders for new dresses': it all paints a picture of a town in decline.
Read MorePigtails and Pernod begins with Simona's regular journey across the channel, heading from Newhaven in December seas to spend her Christmas holidays with her grandparents in Dieppe. Aged just 12 she was already a regular on the ferry, travelling alone six times each year to and from school in Eastbourne.
Read MorePigtails and Pernod is an engaging, warm and funny read, outlining Simona's maturing from excitable pre-teen to a young woman on the verge of adulthood. At the same time it chronicles the changing political and social landscape both among the English ex-pat community in Dieppe and at home, and the burgeoning menace of Naziism and rise of Hitler.
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