FLINT, Medical Officer at the County Mental Hospital.

MOTHER MAISIE, an inmate at the County Mental Hospital

KATE THERESA, a kitten at the Mental Hospital.

MISS TREMAINE, a deaconess.

SPURLING, an employee of Huggins.

BERTIE BEDDOWS, son of Jim and Emma, gassed in France.

STANLEY DOLLAN, retired solicitor, afterwards Councillor.

MISS EMILY TEASDALE, Board of Education Inspector.

MISS VANE, succeeds Miss Sigglesthwaite as Science Mistress.

DR. WYTTON, Medical Officer of Health for South Riding.

MR. EDWIN SMITHERS, Clerk to the County Council.

MR. PRIZETHORPE, County Librarian.

COMMANDER STEPHEN KING-HALL, Broadcasts a description of the Silver Jubilee Procession.

INTRODUCTION TO SOUTH RIDING

South Riding is an extraordinary book, and it was written by an extraordinary woman. It’s as bold and ambitious as Middlemarch by George Eliot, a portrait of a whole community at a time of change and stress, with an endearing and idealistic heroine at its centre.

Why read it now, or dramatise it for television? Well, of course there’s always the timeless reason that it has a strong story, and is full of vivid characters that engage our sympathies. But it feels timely as well: it was written, and set in, the 1930s, a time of forced austerity that offered governments, and local government too, stark challenges and choices. How do we deal with a recession? Do we cut public spending, slash welfare, and in general batten down the hatches, repeating the mantra that “we’re all in this together”? Or do we embrace the alternative of bold programmes of public works, creating employment and stimulating the economy in that way? Rather thrillingly, in this book, the South Riding Council embarks on the latter course, following the examples of Roosevelt’s New Deal in the United States, and Chancellor Hitler’s programme in Germany. And if you thought that PPF, public-private financing, was born in the Blair-Cameron era, you might be surprised to see it in action here. Alderman Snaith wants to do well by his constituents, certainly, but he’ll make sure that there’s something in it for him as well.

We tend to think of local government as worthy but boring. South Riding shows what vital importance it can have in people’s lives. Joe Astell is a case in point; he has moved away from revolutionary socialism because he has found he can affect more change for the good by quietly beavering away on council committees, making unlikely alliances with hard-faced businessmen to get better roads, schools and housing for the people he serves. And then we have the richly human figure of Councillor Huggins, haulier and lay preacher, who is passionate in his desire to better the lives of the slum-dwellers in the Shacks, but fatally compromised by his weakness for the pleasures of the flesh, and easily tempted into a bit of insider dealing.

At the centre of this society sits Mrs Beddows, a very lively septuagenarian, whose character was inspired by Winifred Holtby’s mother, the first woman alderman to serve on the East Riding County Council. Her guidelines are common sense, her deep knowledge of the community, and a hard-headed optimism about human nature and the possibility of making life better. Her relationship with her husband has been disappointing and unfulfilling, and she pours her emotional energy into her council work. She also enjoys a very close and intimate relationship with Robert Carne, the farmer and horse-breeder who would be the romantic hero of the book, if Winifred Holtby believed in romantic heroes. Carne is a man who is out of joint with his times. He is deeply traditional and instinctively conservative. His family has for generations had the status of someone like Jane Austen’s Mr. Knightley, but the 1930s were not a good decade for the Knightleys of this world. And Carne has his personal tragedy, too: he married an aristocratic wife, whose wild extravagance and subsequent decline into insanity have drained his resources, both financial and emotional. He has a daughter, Midge, thirteen years old, physically delicate and emotionally volatile.

Sarah Burton’s arrival on the scene disturbs the precarious balance of this complex society. She’s a local working-class girl made good, who has returned to Yorkshire to apply for the post of headmistress of the local girls’ grammar school. Years younger than the other candidates, she stands out in other ways too: she’s sexually attractive, a gifted and inspiring teacher, fiercely ambitious, opinionated, politically sophisticated, combative, a socialist, a feminist and a pacifist. The governors find her slightly alarming, but appoint her, because she’s clearly much more talented than the opposition. Astell warms to her progressive ideas, and Mrs. Beddows welcomes her as a local lass who wants to put something back into the community. Robert Carne immediately and instinctively loathes her and everything she stands for.

The reader will of course immediately start to imagine a happy ending for the fiery young heroine and the ‘big heavy handsome unhappy-looking man’, but this isn’t Pride and Prejudice, and Winifred Holtby isn’t looking for happy endings, at least of the simpler sort. She had experienced a good deal of disappointment and frustration in her own life, as well as dazzling success.

It’s a remarkable life. Winifred Holtby was born just before the turn of the century, the daughter of a prosperous farmer in the East Riding of Yorkshire. She went to school in Scarborough, where she experienced the German bombardment of the town from battleships in the North Sea.