The marriage bureau
Subtitle: the true story of how two matchmakers arranged love in wartime London
By: Penrose Halson
Contributors: Halson, Penrose
Edition: First HarperLuxe edition.
Published: 2017
Language: eng
Number of pages: 375
ISBN-13: 9780062670649
Subjects: Social life and customs; Marriage; Marriage Bureau (London, England); Dating services; Large type books; History
Work titles: Marriages are made in Bond Street
Description: "In the spring of 1939, with the Second World War looming, two determined twenty-four-year-olds, Heather Jenner and Mary Oliver, decided to open a marriage bureau. They found a tiny office on London's Bond Street and set about the delicate business of matchmaking. Drawing on the bureau's extensive archives, Penrose Halson--who many years later found herself the proprietor of the bureau--tells their story, and those of their clients. From shop girls to debutantes; widowers to war veterans, clients came in search of security, social acceptance, or simply love. And thanks to the meticulous organization and astute intuition of the Bureau's matchmakers, most found what they were looking for. Penrose Halson draws from newspaper and magazine articles, advertisements, and interviews with the proprietors themselves to bring the romance and heartbreak of matchmaking during wartime to vivid, often hilarious, life in this unforgettable story of a most unusual business."--
Notes: "Originally published as Marriages are made in Bond Street in the United Kingdom in 2016 by Macmillan, an imprint of Pan Macmillan."--Title page verso.
Table of contents: title: Audrey's uncle has a brainwave; title: No, it's not a brothel; title: Open for matrimonial business; title: The capitulation of Cedric Thistleton; title: The perfect secretary and other learning curves; title: New clients wanted; title: but no spies, please; title: Mary transforms Myrtle; title: The mansion and the mating; title: Mary's bones and babies; title: While bombs fall the Bureau booms; title: Sex, tragedy, success and bust bodices; title: A sideline and two triumphs; title: Other agendas, pastures new; title: Heather chooses mating over chickens; title: Picot and Dorothy hold the fort; title: Peacetime problems; title: Loneliness and heartbreak; title: Mr. Hedgehog, journalists, a tiny Baptist and lies; title: A chapter of accidents and designs; title: Thanks to Uncle George.