It’s not my phrase – fingertip history – but I love it.

The historian and commentator on British social history, Juliet Gardener uses it when talking about fiction written immediately in the wake of historic events, the recounting of an age unclouded by nostalgia or hindsight.

And in recent months, my reading diet has been composed of fiction written around, in or immediately in the wake of WW2.

Initially, this was to serve as research for novel 5, my work in progress, (with a working title of By the Green of the Spring but that will no doubt change) but I have now found so much enjoyment from reading these authors that I’m beginning to spurn anything written later than half way through the 20th century.

There are so many wonderful writers and brilliant stories to discover and I fear that many may be neglected these days. There seems to be a kind of thirst to read books on prize lists, the latest bestsellers, books by authors being interviewed on Radio 4 or featured in papers or on podcasts.

And there seems no better way for sensing the mood of a particular time, the flavour of ordinary, domestic life in a certain phase or decade than by reading the fiction that was produced either in or just after – within touching distance, in fact, so fingertip history.

Sylvia Townsend Warner’s collection of short stories, English Climate: Wartime Stories, provides a delightfully entertaining read and all the stories were written and published between 1940 and 1946. This is domestic life during the war years. There is no mention of battles or theatres of war or second fronts or campaigns – but a great deal about jam that won’t set through inadequacy of sugar rations, the impossibility of making a successful omelette with dried eggs, the bossiness and petty squabbles between women on committees and parish councils.

There are also more complex issues addressed – the service man or woman home on leave who returns to different circumstances, who can no longer find their place in the household.

Molly Panter-Downes’ short story collection, Good Evening, Mrs Craven: the wartime stories is equally compelling through engaging with the Home Front side of the war. Here, again, are the stories that history books don’t concern themselves with – yet they are the human story – and a wonderful minefield for the contemporary writer wanting to find out the climate of those times.

Monica Dickens’ novels seem to be very overlooked these days. Yet again, I have found them so enjoyable with characters that leap off the page with conviction. Of course, as Charles Dickens’ Great Granddaughter, that’s probably no surprise. Many of her books were inspired by her personal experiences – as a nurse, in a munitions factory producing spitfires, in a newspaper office, as a home help – although she made clear that I did not take these jobs in order to write books – the books just came out of the experiences. Her novels capture so keenly for the contemporary reader what it was like being a woman in the 1930s, 40s and 50s – informal social history, if you like, in the guise of a novel.

Ivy Compton-Burnett is another writer that is well worth our attention. Born in 1884 and living until 1969, she is described in the edition I have of her novel A House and Its Head (picked up at a charity shop sale) as one of 20th century England’s most original and admired writers. She published 18 novels and was made a Dame shortly before her death – yet how many book groups and contemporary readers bother with her now? On the back of my edition, there’s a quote from a review describing her as One of the most original, hilarious and disturbing novelists of her generation. A House and Its Head is set in 1885 and was first published in 1935 – so again, we have fingertip history for Compton-Burnett was still within touching distance of the decade.

So next time you are trying to figure out a choice for a book group read or are scanning the shelves for something neither classic nor contemporary, why not give these wonderful authors a consideration?

You will, I promise you, be richly rewarded!

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