Visitors from London

Farrars #2

by Kitty Barne, Ruth Gervis (Illustrator)

The Farrar family, whom we have met before in Family Footlights, are spending the summer holidays in 1939 in Sussex, in charge of the same delightful aunt. Suddenly the war looms upon their horizon. The empty house across that barley field has been offered for evacuee children from London and the Farrar's find themselves involved in furnishing, staffing and generally organizing the whole affair.

262 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1940

About the author

Marion Catherine "Kitty" Barne was a British children's author and screenwriter, born and brought up in Sussex, England. She studied at the Royal College of Music. In 1912, she married Eric Streatfeild, a cousin of another children's author, Noel Streatfeild. During World War II, she was a member of the Women's Voluntary Service, responsible for helping children evacuated to Sussex.

Barne won the 1940 Carnegie Medal for her book Visitors from London, which tells the story of children evacuated to Sussex during World War II. She is best remembered today for her pony books Rosina Copper and its sequel Rosina and Son, about the true story of an Argentine polo pony mare. She also wrote some nonfiction books, including a biography of Elizabeth Fry (1950) and a history of the Girl Guides. Barne died in 1961.

Reviews

[eleanor · Rating 3 out of 5]

this has its problems, but for a evacuee book written in the first year of war it is very interesting! a great addition to my diss

07.09.24: reread because i wrote an entire chapter of my diss on this book

[Amber Scaife · Rating 4 out of 5]

A group of siblings spend their summer holidays staying in the country with their very cool aunt Myra, whose favorite answer to their many requests is "Well, I don't see why not?" They get a surprise message that the country estate they're staying on will be home to a small group of London evacuees, and thus starts their adventures in fixing up the place in preparation and then all their hard work to keep their new guests healthy and happy.

What a lovely story this is: boisterous, generally happy, and well-adjusted kiddos helping their London charges adjust and then thrive in their new country setting, with just the right amount of grumpy adults and childhood mischief mixed in. I absolutely loved it.

[Gina House · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5🌟 I enjoyed this quirky and crazy summer vacation adventure by Kitty Barne. I loved her book, Admiral's Walk, and I was hoping to love this one just as much. Especially since I'm super interested about stories that take place during war years.

But, this is more of a book for the 8-12 year old range. The antics and bickering between the kids and the adults had me feeling a bit worn out by the end. The writing style and theme was similar to a Noel Streatfeild book where the author includes a 4+ children family and at least one adult and all of them are lovable and helpful in their own way, with their own unique personalities. Myra and the Farrar children were top-notch for sure.

For me, a chaotic situation where people are worried, angry and generally discombobulated causes me stress, even in children's books. When I was finished with this small volume, I let out a huge sigh of relief. Whew, it's finally over!

The writing, of course, is wonderful. I'm going to give this book another try when I'm feeling more settled and content in my life so that I can handle the overall upheaval of this story. I definitely liked it, but it was not a cozy, comforting or relaxing tale. Lots of country adventure for the kids, though!

[Carolyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Visitors from London. Kitty Barne. 1940 @CILIPCKG Children in the country in WWII. Good writing. Unintentionally reveals class bias.

Reviewed @reallyReads

[Manybooks · Rating 2 out of 5]

Please note that while I have not been able to locate an actual physical copy of Kitty Barne's Visitors from London (which won the 1940 Carnegie Medal and is the second instalment in a four novel series) even after multiple attempts trying, I finally did manage to find and read a few excerpts of Barne's text online (and in my opinion, this is enough for me to leave a review, but that indeed, if I ever do get my hands on Visitors from London, I will indeed read Visitors from London in its entirety and also perhaps even change my review if necessary).

And well, even though I thus only know the general textual background for Visitors from London, which is basically that the upper middle-class and very much in all ways "together" Farrar children from the first novel, from Family Floodlights, arrive in the Sussex countryside of WWII to spend their holidays from boarding school on a farm with their aunt Myra and there encounter four working-class families from London, who have been evacuated by the British government to protect them from the war, from the Nazis and their bombs, and are described by Kitty Barne as being pretty well out of their depth and suffering from some very serious and sometimes also rather funny culture shock in rural Sussex, yes indeed, this premise combined with the online textual selections of Visitors from London I have found, they certainly demonstrate to me that Kitty Barne's story, that her Visitors from London is sadly and unfortunately majorly dated with regard to in particular social class stratification (and not in any way comfortably and acceptably either, as the passages I have encountered just really and truly feel majorly problematic regarding the latter). For while the internal monologues that some of the Farrar children engage in in Visitors from London I certainly have found rather tedious and a bit awkward, it is for me indeed much worse how Barne's use in Visitors from London of an artificial and often sillily exaggerated Cockney vernacular for the evacuees feels not only strange but also annoyingly patronising and almost deliberately (but also likely inadvertently) insulting, holier than thou (and that this definitely leaves a quite bitter and horrid taste in my mouth, totally makes me cringe and also makes me consider Kitty Barne as not really textually appreciating the London based evacuees in Visitors from London but rather finding them persons whose lower social ranking automatically seems to make them lesser as human beings, makes them worthy of being laughed at and not really taken and accepted, valued for full so to speak).

And with this in mind (and of course primarily from the online textual selections I have read of Visitors from London), I must rather negatively contrast how Kitty Barne presents her working class urban WWII evacuees with how Eve Garnett in her 1937 (and also Carnegie Medal winning) novel The Family from One End Street presents her equally working class Ruggles family with empathy, grace, understanding and with in my opinion realism not at all imbued with paternalism (and that this is indeed a very major and important difference between these two novels and these two authors and is probably also one of the main reasons why The Family from One End Street is even with its 1937 publication date still in print and rather universally beloved, while Visitors from London is not only mostly forgotten today but is supposedly also the first Carnegie Medal winners to have gone out of print).

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very enjoyable old fashioned book. I'll look for others by this author. I did sort of wonder where the Farrar's parents were and how the children came to be in Myra's care. Perhaps these things were explained in an earlier book. Things got tied up remarkably well in the end. I did wish for a little more of a comeuppance for one character than was forthcoming, but not a big deal. Lovely illustrations by Ruth Gervis. I think my Vintage Book Circle pals would love this one. Too bad it is so hard to come by.

[Simon · Rating 3 out of 5]

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