LoveReading Says
This brilliantly captivating memoir by Patricia and Jean Owtram sits as a LoveReading Star Book and non-fiction Book of the Month. Their first book Codebreaking Sisters (also a LoveReading Star Book) was a Sunday Times Bestseller back in the early days of Covid. It detailed their memories of the Second World War where their fluency in German, honed after their family had taken in two Austrian Jewish refugees, saw them signing the Official Secrets Act and embarking in intelligence roles. The first and last few pages of their second book, Century Sisters, are in celebration of the the life of Jean who died on the 2 April 2023. The rest of the pages written together through until January 2023, are also a celebration of nearly a century of sisterhood. We travel with them and their family and friends through childhood and into the war and beyond. Their lives after the war are just as groundbreaking and inspiring as their war years. Photos help to give vivid support to their recollections. Jean’s advice to young people today is, to: “travel if they are able, and make sure to meet people from different backgrounds. Try new places and have a go at things.” which really strikes a chord. In the last couple of heart-aching pages Pat says: “Nothing was better than travels with my sister”. I absolutely adored joining these two women as they shared how they lived, really and truly lived, their lives. Century Sisters is just as engaging, just as riveting, and just as worthwhile as Codebreaking Sisters and I can recommend both with my heart and soul.
Liz Robinson
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Century Sisters Our Hundred Years Synopsis
The best-selling authors of Codebreaking Sisters, Pat and Jean Owtram, take us back in time once again with recently rediscovered diaries and letters from the ‘20s and 30s that paint a vivid picture of their childhood at Newland Hall in Lancashire’s Lune Valley. Here they lived with their parents Bunty and Cary Owtram and younger brother Bob, supported by a fascinating cast of cooks, maids and groundsmen, all presided over by ‘Grandboffin’, the sisters’ indomitable grandfather.
The Owtram sisters’ childhood was one of nannies and governesses, balls and tennis parties, theatricals and ponies. But their hilarious stories of British eccentricity and etiquette and the trials and tribulations of boarding school, are set against the backdrop of a world in the throes of great change; the Spanish Civil War, the Great Depression, hunger marches, the abdication of Edward VIII and his wedding to “that American”, Mrs Simpson... Closer to home, the sisters witnessed a shocking murder- suicide, in a scenario straight out of Romeo and Juliet.
In 1938, the arrival at Newland Hall of the first Austrian Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis, became the catalyst for the Owtram sisters’ decision to join the women’s forces, where they serve with such distinction in World War Two. The war changed their lives forever. The work of post war recovery opened to the sisters a world that hitherto inconceivable. Jean immersed herself in travel, working with refugees. Later, she became a social worker and one of the founding members of the team that set up Lancaster University. Pat became one of the first female journalists on the Daily Mail before pursuing a career in television at Granada and the BBC, producing such great family favourites as University Challenge and the Sky At Night.
With Jean soon to turn 98 and Pat approaching her 100th birthday in June 2023, this is a unique opportunity to hear more first-hand stories from a soon-to-be-forgotten world. Using the sisters’ contemporaneous correspondence, diary entries (including Pat’s 1940/41 Blitz diary) and their 21st century reflection, Century Sisters will tell those stories with the inimitable Owtram style and flair.
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