I thought it was time to make another pick from Christopher Fowler’s “Book Of Forgotten Authors” (2017) and as I had an unread copy of this very bulky paperback sat on my shelves already this was an obvious choice.

Kathleen Winsor (1919-2003) is one of those authors who have become undone by the passage of time as this was reputedly the biggest selling novel of the 1940s.  A debut novel which made a huge impression followed by a career which never again achieved such heights.  When first submitted for publication it was over 2500 pages- it was cut by well over a half (the edition I read came in at 972 pages).

Winsor’s lusty tale of excess in the Restoration period and the court of King Charles II arrived at the tail-end of World War II.  What must a shell-shocked war-ravaged world have made of it?  Well, the public saw it as tantalising escapism and bought it in droves whilst many American states banned it because of obscenity- notoriety which must have helped those sales.

Notoriety is a key point here as let me introduce a character who makes Becky Sharp seem virtuous, the fabulously awful Amber St. Clare whose very name alone suggests territory we might now associate with Jackie Collins- a not entirely inappropriate comparison as the thing I love most about this book is how it straddles the literary and well-reserached historical novel and the decades later sex n’ shopping genre with such aplomb.  This is the archetypal bodice-ripper and Amber St Clare is its heart.

In the latter part of the novel a long-time supporter of hers describes her as an “unprincipled, calculating adventuress” and not even Amber could deny that.  It proves impossible to maintain a consistent sympathy towards her.  From the moment a couple of cavaliers arrive in her country village and she falls for Lord Carlton we know we are in for a turbulent ride.

She stumbles into the same pitfalls as many women before and since and her relocation to London in the 1660s allows her to be a witness to historical events we all know about.  There is an extraordinary amount of research (apparently 365 books were read to explore this period) which is incorporated really very well.  The novel frequently shifts from the fictional protagonists to King Charles and his court.  Nell Gwynn is there (but she fizzles out as a character, probably as she did in real life) as is Barbara Palmer, the Countess of Castlemaine who is here depicted as a long-standing rival to Amber.  The King’s bed-hopping from one mistress to another whilst the Queen is unable to produce an heir is well-known and here is fictional Amber St Clare right in the thick of it.

What 1940s America objected to was this depiction of the Royal Court and its promotion of adultery, abortion, plotting and murder but it is these which drive the reader on through this long work.  It’s all carried out with an unflagging enthusiasm by the author which completely won me over (“You want more! I can go on twice as long!”).  It meant I could happily enjoy the more “soapy” aspects- the 1940s Hollywood over-inflated dialogue in love scenes, the breathy “oh, my darling” etc. grated at times but it didn’t affect my enjoyment. I think long novels tend to have me rooting for them because of the time I have to commit to them but I certainly found this worthwhile.

Back to the author- she never really lived this book down, despite publishing another seven novels.  The husband whose book on Charles II she read which so piqued her interest was ditched for the very-famous band leader Artie Shaw.  (Wikipedia relates he criticised his then wife Ava Gardner for reading Winsor’s novel which he considered trash and then, Reader, he married her).  A fourth marriage to lawyer and politician Paul A. Porter was more long-lasting.

I loved this book.  True, much of it can be seen as a well-paced romp but occasionally the pace slows, for example, a section involving the Great Plague of 1665 concentrates on its effects on the main characters and I found it quite unlike anything I’d read on this subject before and very moving (and with a hefty slab of melodrama).  Set just over a decade we see Amber grow from precocious scheming minx to mature scheming minx which makes her a true unrepentant great amongst manipulative anti-heroes.  This is undoubtedly a popular fiction classic and deserves to bring joy to readers for generations to come.  I love the combination of the tacky and the serious.  I just can’t imagine what else she managed to put into her original draft!!

“Forever Amber” was published in 1944.  I read a 2000 Penguin paperback edition with an introduction by Barbara Taylor Bradford.