Their Finest Hour and a Half
Lissa Evans

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synopsis

It’s 1940. France has fallen, and only a narrow strip of sea lies between Great Britain and invasion. The country is in peril. What’s needed (obviously) is a morale-boosting, heart-warming war film, preferably one that will appeal to the American market.

As bombs start to fall on London, work begins on ‘Just an Ordinary Wednesday’, an almost-true tale of bravery and rescue at Dunkirk. And since call-up has stripped the film industry of the brightest and the best, it’s the callow, the jaded and the utterly unsuitable who are making up the numbers.

There’s Catrin Cole, junior copy-writer turned romantic dialogue specialist; Ambrose Hiliard, third most popular British film star of 1924, currently available for all leading roles; Edith Beadmore, ex-seamstress at Madame Tussaud’s and ex-Londoner, having been combed twice in two months, whose peacetime job as a catering manager hasn’t prepared him for his sudden, unexpected elevation to Special Military Advisor.

Lissa Evans

had a brief career in medicine and then spent five years as a producer in BBC radio Light Entertainment. Next, she moved to television where her credits as producer/director include Room 101, Father Ted and The Kumars at Number 42. After a decade of running a red pencil through other people’s work, she eventually began to write for herself. Their Finest Hour and a Half is her third novel. She lives in London with her husband and two daughters.