Mrs. Butterfield has serious reservations about the trip and once she finds out about the letter her anxiety grows. She's right to worry, as unbeknownst to Mrs. Harris, the two London ladies are incorrectly taken for spies and get into some very compromising situations. All sorts of complications eventually arise, especially once they realize their status and Liz becomes involved, much to her own peril. Plot-wise, Keystone cop KGB officers mistake a char lady as Lady Char, an aristocrat and therefore clearly a spy. Different Soviet organisations argue over who has authority in relation to foreign visitors. The British Foreign Office, helped by a sympathetic Russian diplomat, finally get their act together, and all ends in the way that such easy-reading should. Nonsense, for sure. Mrs Harris Goes To Moscow is replete with coincidences and caricatures. But of course caricatures are grist to the Russia-in-fiction mill. We are all about how Russia is perceived. Mrs Harris is a London char lady whose exploits started (in Flowers for Mrs Harris, or Mrs ‘Arris Goes to Paris, or indeed Mrs Harris Goes to Paris) with saving up money to buy a Dior dress in France. After that, she went to America and became an MP (in separate books, naturally). And, finally, she’s off to Moscow to reunite one of her employers with his long-lost Russian love. That’s when things start to get ridiculous. When I first discovered Mrs. Harris in Mrs. 'Arris Goes to Paris, I was throughly charmed as she was a multi-dimensional character in a delightful book enriched with wonderful drawings. Mrs. Harris is one of those characters you just don't forget, and despite the book coming out many decades ago, it transcends the years. I haven't read the two installments that follow, but from what I gather they were also very good, most likely stronger than this one. I'm sure I will get to them eventually.

Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2021-12-09 06:07:13 Bookplateleaf 0008 Boxid IA40304008 Camera USB PTP Class Camera Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier She was genuinely moved by the sight, moved to murmer, ‘Cor blimey, but ain’t it beautiful,’ and felt suddenly glad that she had come. mrs harris goes to moscow, pp. 82-83 There’s no loo paper … And what’s more there ain’t no stopper for the barftub. The ‘ot water runs cold and the cold water runs ‘ot and the shower don’t run at all. When yer pulls the flush nuffink ‘appens. Yer call this a ‘otel?

About the contributors

There is a charming account of the awe felt by Mrs Harris when she looks out of her fictional central Moscow hotel window (presumably what was then the National and is now the Marriott) …

When your choice of fiction is influenced by where it is set, then you can end up reading novels that you would not otherwise have given a second glance to. So far as Russia in Fiction is concerned, Mrs Harris Goes To Moscow is one such novel. As was the real-life fate of too many couples caught in such East-West relationships, the Soviet authorities would not let Lizabeta leave the country. (Owen Matthews wrote about his parents’ troubles in this regard in Stalin’s Children (Bloomsbury, 2009)). So redolent is Mrs Harris Goes To Moscow of the 1970s that Russia in Fiction did a double-take when discovering that it had been re-issued by Bloomsbury in 2012. Formerly a small independent publisher, Bloomsbury were enriched beyond what they must have imagined by their astute decision to take a punt on Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, a children’s book by an unknown author that had already been rejected by several other publishers. It would be fascinating to know whether J.K. Rowling had any influence on Bloomsbury’s decision to re-publish Paul Gallico’s ‘Mrs Harris’ series. Gallico's plot feels contrived, and the caricatures of the Soviet and British diplomats who intercede fall somewhat flat. Even Prince Philip is written in to play a small part in events (and now it's hard not to think of his recent death). every sign in a wholly unintelligible foreign alphabet, the Cyrillic lettering. Different sounds, different smells, a kind of combination of cheap soap and disinfectant and the clothes basket containing last week’s wash, different tempo, rude and hard looking officials, lumpy sheep-like ill-clad crowds mrs harris goes to moscow, p.69urn:lcp:mrsarrisgoestomo0000gall:epub:14244689-4796-44c5-9b5e-71e181a4d521 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier mrsarrisgoestomo0000gall Identifier-ark ark:/13960/s2fxgzb54pb Invoice 1652 Isbn 0440059054 Lccn 74019062 Ocr tesseract 5.0.0-1-g862e Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 1.0000 Ocr_module_version 0.0.14 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA14623 Openlibrary_edition