Sam Brigger

Our TV critic David Bianculli has this review.

David Bianculli reviewed the film Peaky Blinders, The Immortal Man.

Coming up, novelist Francis Spuffer talks about his new book, None Such, about a young woman in World War II London trying to survive the Blitz and defeat time-traveling fascists.

This is Fresh Air Weekend.

Our book critic Maureen Corrigan is a fan of British author Francis Spufford's novels, and so am I. Two of my most enjoyable reading experiences over the last 10 years were reading Cahokia Jazz, a 1920s noir crime novel set in an alternate American history where a sovereign majority indigenous nation-state thrives in the middle of the United States, and Golden Hill, a novel set in 18th century New York.

If I had to make a list of my top five great American novels, Golden Hill would be high on that list, despite the fact that it takes place before the country was founded and its author is a Brit.

Now that author, my guest Francis Spufford, has written another incredibly entertaining book.

It's called None Such.

It takes place in London during the war as a city must try to survive the Blitz, the eight-month bombing campaign led by the Nazis that killed over 40,000 British.

Iris Hawkins, a young independent woman, is trying to survive the nightly attacks while pushing against society's constraints that would keep her in a secretarial pool until she was safely married off.

Her ambitions seek something much more expansive.

While her independent side fights against it, she finds herself falling in love with Jeff, a young man working in an even younger broadcast format, television.

Oh, and did I mention she has to fight off magic time-traveling fascists who want to travel in the past and kill Winston Churchill?

Yes, that's there too.

And a magical land called Nonesuch and angels and a lot more.

Francis Buffer got to novel writing on the late side, in his 50s, after writing nonfiction.

He's also written Light Perpetual, a novel that imagines the lives of five real-life people if they had not died as children in the Blitz, and an unauthorized book in the Narnia series, which were officially written by C.S.

Lewis.

He also wrote a memoir called The Child That Books Built, about his early escape into reading, and Unapologetic, Why Despite Everything, Christianity Can Still Make Surprising Emotional Sense.

Francis Buffard, welcome to Fresh Air.