For all of you who have read my book, here are the references I embedded in the text, as promised:
The title is a direct reference to Virginia Woolf’s 1925 novel Mrs Dalloway, an account of a day in the life of a fifty-something-year-old woman whose ex-lover turns up out of the blue and causes her to reflect on her past life.
Gabriel, the unexpected guest who was the catalyst for Claudia’s adventures, was also the catalyst for Mary, virgin mother of the Messiah.
The gardener, Sellors, is a reference to Mellors the gamekeeper in D H Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
Harriet emerged from the pages of Among the Bohemians by Virginia Nicholson.
Noel Coward’s first play, The Vortex, first produced in 1924, is the tale of a promiscuous middle-aged woman and her relationship with her drug-addled son.
Bright Young Things is how the press described the 1920s irrepressible party animals. It is also the name of the 2003 film based on Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies.
Brief Encounter is the 1945 film written by Noël Coward about a married woman who falls passionately in love with a man in a railway station café, with poignant results.
The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim is about a quartet of women in the 1920s who decamp, without their spouses, to a villa in Italy, where the sun and the atmosphere encourage them to re-evaluate their lives.