For me, the 70s is the period when everyone went wild and crazy about orange and brown, when surviving hippie movements segued into Hare Krishna groups and both men and women could be seen walking the streets in purple velour pants. Yup, I kid you not . . . And then there was the Bee-Gees, John Travolta in a white suit, and bell-bottom jeans and . . . Huh: despite having lived through those years, memory is a bit hazy. Therefore, setting a book in the period can come with quite some challenges – as Helen discovered. Below, her personal reflection on the decade.
Recollections of the 1970s
They say that if you don’t remember the Swinging Sixties, then you weren’t there (which can also mean you were so high on drugs you missed it all!) The sixties: the age of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones; Flower Power, the Mini Skirt, the Pill… I was there, but I don’t remember much because I was only ten in 1963, sixteen by 1969, and I was one of those shy, naïve girls who hid behind my curtain of long hair and my thick, bottle-bottom glasses which sort-of helped me to see things that were fairly close. Being extremely short-sighted and those awful glasses did nothing for confidence.
I hated school, had only a couple of friends, was so shy of boys that when my first boyfriend dumped me (I was fifteen) for someone else, I didn’t have the courage to go out with anyone else until my early twenties. (That was disastrous too…) And then came the 1970s. Frankly, it wasn’t much better. I didn’t find my confidence, was just as naïve and shy and had left school to work in our local library. Looking back I should have loved that job. As I am now, I would have loved it – access to all those books! But at the time being depressed with no support for mental issues, didn’t add up to a Jolly Time. (My doctor simply told me to ‘pull myself together.’) The problem? I wanted to write. I think most creative people get that feeling of ‘what am I doing here?’ when they know they’re doing the wrong thing but have no idea how to escape the treadmill of familiarity and security. (For the record, I finally got accepted by a publisher in 1993, a week after my 40th birthday.)
As a writer now, I’d toyed with how could I use those thirteen years as a library assistant to my advantage? When I discovered Debbie Young’s Sophie Sayers Cosy Mysteries I enjoyed the easy-to-read, light, entertaining stories, which inspired me to think, ‘Can I do something similar?’ Then we had Covid and the lockdowns. It was fine being at home because our nearest neighbour is ¼ of a mile away and we have thirteen acres of land. The local pub was doing takeaways and our small village shop was keeping going. (Plus the May 2020 weather was lovely.) I needed to write something different though, so started on a Cost Mystery Series based on my library years. Enter Jan Christopher.
Some of the background to the five books so far in the series, they are partially semi-autobiographical, except I hasten to point out, beyond Agatha Christie I was never involved in any murders, and Jan, unlike me, while a little shy and naïve is nowhere near as lacking in self-confidence – and she has a boyfriend (later her fiancé) DS Laurie Walker, who looks like a young Cary Grant. Now there’s a 1970s reference straight off for you. Who below a certain age knows who Cary Grant was?
I thought that writing this series would be a doddle. I was wrong. I’ve discovered that I need to do as much research for the 1970s as I do for my 18th century Sea Witch Voyages. More, in fact, because a lot of readers remember the ’70s – I can’t fudge things or make it up!
The 70s… fashion at its best? :)But just how did we manage, particularly as girls or women? No Internet. The home PC was still an apple in the eye, (yes, the Apple pun is deliberate!) No mobile phones. Wanted to talk to a friend in private? Use the public phone box because most homes only had ONE telephone, which was usually in the hall where the whole household could earwig. As for the phone box – I had to explain the A and B buttons in one of my cosy mysteries as my Beta Reader had no idea what they were. And inevitably you still weren’t private because someone else was waiting outside to use the phone. I saw Star Wars first time round soon after its release. I even saw Elton John live in a small London theatre before he was really famous.
Fish and Chips was virtually the only takeaway, most families only had the one car, and very few teenagers learnt to drive until they were in their twenties. It was illegal in most pubs for women on their own to be served at the bar, no woman could apply for a bank loan without a husband or father’s assistance. Men’s jobs were men’s jobs, women’s were women’s. How many women did you see driving lorries, buses, trains back in the 1970s? Very, very few. There were only a handful of female MPs (even when Maggie Thatcher was P.M.) There were female G.Ps but most consultants were male (and more than a few were unsympathetic to women’s issues.) And don’t mention football! Why on earth was football, for so long the prerogative of men? If you think misogyny, sexual harassment and bullying is bad now, try going back to the 1970s!
In the library, the ‘dodgy’ books were all out the back in a cupboard. Lady Chatterley’s Lover type books, although I always thought that Dennis Wheatley’s novels were a bit ‘raunchy’. (Outright rude!) They were on the shelves, though.
Did I, perhaps, experience the 1970s differently to some females because my education (well, the school) was of a poor level? The Comprehensive school system started in 1969, after I’d left the local girl’s Secondary Modern. We were regarded as the failures because we hadn’t passed the 11+ exam to go to the ‘bright kids’ grammar school. When I started at Wellington Avenue, as example, there was no science lab! Apart from being regarded as not very bright, what would girls want with a science lab? We were expected to leave school with a rudimentary education suitable for our expected jobs of hairdressers, shop assistants and then housewives. I guess I was lucky with the library, but apart from a couple of Saturday staff being lads in the later 70’s, (What became of Paul Evans? He was a super young lad!) all of us mere ‘assistants’ were female. The Librarian, of course, was male and we called him Mr Hxxx. Never by his first name. (I don’t even remember what it was!)
South Chingford Library, photo by Alison MortonMy first pay packet for the month was just over £100. I’d never seen so much money!
Sexism, sex discrimination, unequal pay and hardly any women’s rights were normal life. Young unmarried or newly married women worked, but to be a housewife, to cook and clean, was still expected for older women, although this was starting to change by the mid-decade.
For myself, in my late teens/early twenties, I didn’t feel unsafe when out and about, although most of us had no idea of domestic violence or what a ‘sex-offender’ was. We encountered ‘flashers’ in secluded places – the cliched dirty bloke wearing a grey mac and nothing else. (Lost on me, I was too short-sighted to see anything even remotely interesting.) I think we accepted things going wrong more easily: a bus didn’t turn up? You simply walked instead. Sunday lunch and evening dinner was eaten as a family, with no TV on, so we conversed. Strikes were common. The three-day week in early 1974 resulted in time-tabled power cuts. The shopping catalogues were poured over, which included the Green Shield Stamp catalogue, and the obsession with collecting the stamps in order to exchange full books for ‘luxury’ goods. The dentist was free. Most teachers were bullies. (Not all, but most in my school were.) Racism wasn’t an issue because most older white people were racist as a matter of course. (I’m pleased to say I wasn’t then, and I’m not now!)
A lot about the 1970s was positive, we were on the brink of the 1980s and the age of technology. (A good thing? Maybe not?) The 1970s were not a Golden Age, though, so don’t think they were. I wouldn’t mind being my 2024 self back then, now that I am a writer, I have ‘grown up’, am a tad wiser (I hope) and confident. Which is why I enjoy writing about Jan Christopher. Apart from memory anecdotes of that decade, Jan isn’t me, but I suspect she is a little of the me that I would have liked to have been.
But one sad and wholly detrimental difference here in the 21st century compared to the 1970s … back then, we had, used and valued our libraries!
A Mirror Murder – the first Jan Christopher mystery
Eighteen-year-old library assistant Jan Christopher’s life is to change on a rainy Friday evening in July 1971, when her legal guardian and uncle, DCI Toby Christopher, gives her a lift home after work. Driving the car, is her uncle’s new Detective Constable, Laurie Walker – and it is love at first sight for the young couple. But romance is soon to take a back seat when a baby boy is taken from his pram, a naked man is scaring young ladies in nearby Epping Forest, and an elderly lady is found, brutally murdered… Are the events related? How will they affect the staff and public of the local library where Jan works – and will romance survive and blossom between library assistant Jan Christopher and DC Laurie Walker – or will the brutal murder intervene?
Buy it HERE
First accepted for traditional publication in 1993, Helen Hollick became a USA Today Bestseller with her historical novel, The Forever Queen (titled A Hollow Crown in the UK) with the sequel, Harold the King (US: I Am The Chosen King) being novels that explore the events that led to the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Her Pendragon’s Banner Trilogy is a fifth-century version of the Arthurian legend, and she writes a nautical adventure/supernatural series, The Sea Witch Voyages. She has also branched out into the quick read novella, ‘Cosy Mystery’ genre with her Jan Christopher Mysteries, set in the 1970s, with the first in the series, A Mirror Murder incorporating her, often hilarious, memories of working as a library assistant. The fifth in the series, A Memory Of Murder, was published in May 2024, with more to follow!
Her non-fiction books are Pirates: Truth and Tales and Life of A Smuggler. Latest on her writing list is a book about the ghosts of North Devon, and Jamaica Gold the seventh Sea Witch Voyage.
She lives with her family in an eighteenth-century farmhouse in North Devon with their dogs and cats, while on the farm there are showjumper horses, fat Exmoor ponies, an elderly Welsh pony, geese, ducks and hens. And several resident ghosts.
Website: https://helenhollick.net/
Amazon Author Page: https://viewauthor.at/HelenHollick
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/helen.hollick
Blog: supporting authors & their books
https://ofhistoryandkings.blogspot.com/
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Start Here: January 2024
Check out the previous Marching Through History post HERE!
Lovely nostalgic post, Helen. I loved the 70s, probably because I was young and pain free. I had a great time. Started secondary school in 1970, left with a few GCEs in 77 – got married in 78!! Yes, married at 18!! madness. What made it madder for the time was my husband was black – almost unheard of in our neck of the woods so we suffered a lot of negativity. I remember the racism well – and was disowned by my grandfather! I remember the weird fashions, the power cuts, the three day week, the strikes but God, it was fun and I was never afraid. Bring it back, I say. I am now off to buy one of your murder mysteries because I haven’t tried them yet.
Ido remember the fun times – especially towards the end of the 70s after I’d passed my driving test. My big regret is that I didn’t appreciate working in the library – but then things _were_ very different back then!
Married at 18???? Wow… Double wow at braving the stereotypes of the time.
For me, the 70s is the decade that made orange and brown the most popular colour combination :)
What a lovely post Helen!
I’m a shade older than you, Helen (b. 1952) and I have some similar recollections, though mine are of growing up in Glasgow. I think you’re right in saying that if something wasn’t going quite to plan we just adjusted and got on with it- even if it meant walking 5 miles to get home if the last bus had gone, or didn’t turn up (often in dim streetlighting to my almost-countryside peripheral housing estate). I was never afraid to walk those streets, though in all honesty, I wouldn’t ever have been in what were considered dodgy central city areas alone.
I’m now sad that I’ve few photos of the time. I’ve none with me in a pelmet around my (then very thin) hips with long socks stretched to above my knees with a strip of flesh showing, and a polo neck. Or wearing bell-bottoms. My grandkids would have a hoot to see any such photos. My wedding photos in 1974 are about all I’ve got now.
I enjoyed reading the first couple of your Jan Christopher series very much!
Thank you Nancy – I had over-the-knee socks too – and a Dr Who (Tom Baker) scarf which I knitted myself. I got told off at work once because my skirt was too short… got sent home to change it. Naturally, I didn’t hurry… LOL
The day the 70s became historical fiction was the day the music died! Yes, American Pie, Lindisfarne and Jackie Magazine were all part of my teen years – as was flying standby to New York with Freddie Laker for fifty quid when the glass ceiling, strikes and national depression became stifling in the UK. Great post, Helen, and I love the Jan Christopher novels – you capture these times brilliantly.
Jackie was a favourite of mine also (said to have been named for the author Jacqueline Wilson who, back then, worked for the magazine.) I mention Jackie in one of my cosy mysteries!
This was a terrific post and had me wandering through nostalgia land. I spent 1970-74 as a modern languages student based in Leeds with two periods of 6 months each abroad. The big feature of student life was the hop (dance) every Saturday night, admission 2/- (10p) for students. They always ended with Procul Harum’s A Whiter Shade of Pale! Here’s the link if you’d like a wallow: https://youtu.be/CJxpKlTID2Q
Your Jan books are packed with period detail and I’ve enjoyed every one. When’s the next one out?
Thanks Alison – I think my big memroy from various Christmas parties is Noddy Holder’s It’s CHRIST…MAS!” And going mad with ‘March of the Mods’. Of course rather a lot of drink helped … LOL
The next Jan Christopher is well on its way: “A Mischief of Murder” – July 1973 and set around the annual village flower and veg show in Devon. I hope to publish it in June or early July. :-)