Perfectly timed for International Women’s Day 2027

A Place of Dreams: Desire, Deception and a Wartime Coming of Age – Alison Twells

Norah Hodgkinson (1925-2009) was a working-class schoolgirl, later clerical worker, and a prolific diarist. In 1940, at the age of 14, she knitted a pair of socks for the Royal Navy Comforts Fund. The sailor who received them wrote to thank her, drawing Norah into a mysterious ‘love triangle’ and an experience that we would now call sexual grooming.

When Norah died in 2009, Alison Twells – her great niece and a professional historian – received a suitcase archive containing Norah’s 71 pocket diaries, a collection of photographs and the sailor’s letters. In A Place of Dreams, Alison explores the coming-of-age of an ordinary girl in wartime and uncovers a dark tale of male rivalry, wartime anonymity and a young woman’s appetite for life and love amidst unexpected dangers.

Tickets on Sale Soon – £3