BOOKS
Anne Youngson switched professional gear when she moved from automobiles to authorship – and in doing so, found her true vocation.
The evacuation of Gibraltar during World War II is one of the hidden stories of that era. An official notice issued in 1940 to the women, children and infirm who would be sent away from ‘the Rock’ called the process ‘a complicated matter’; Anne Youngson’s skilful, understated third novel brings this tale compellingly to life.
‘Very little has been written about the evacuation,’ the author tells me when we speak. Fearing German invasion, British subjects in Gibraltar were brought first to French Morocco and then, when France fell, to Britain. Youngson came across this history as she was perusing the BBC archives. In it, she found a vehicle through which to tell the story of a young woman finding her place in the world. Rose Dunbar is a sheltered 23-year-old when the book begins; ‘a category of one, defined by the family to which I belonged,’ she says at the outset. By its end, she has become an assured adult, making her way on her own terms.
Youngson herself may be in her eighth decade, but she has always understood what it takes to carve an individual path. She made her debut as an author at 70, with Meet Me at the Museum, which was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award in 2018. Before that, she had worked for 30 years in the car industry as a project manager for Rover, though her degree was in
