Penrose Halson Book order

Set against the backdrop of impending war in 1939, the story follows Heather Jenner and Mary Oliver, two ambitious young women who establish a marriage bureau in London. Their journey unfolds through the challenges of matchmaking, as they navigate the complexities of love and relationships during a tumultuous time. Penrose Halson, later the bureau's proprietor, shares insights from the bureau's archives, revealing the personal stories of clients seeking companionship amidst uncertainty.

In the spring of 1939, with the Second World War looming, two determined twenty-four-year-olds, Heather Jenner and Mary Oliver, decided to open a marriage bureau. They found a tiny office on London's Bond Street and set about the delicate business of match-making. Drawing on the bureau's extensive archives, Penrose Halson - who many years later found herself the proprietor of the bureau - tells their story, and those of their clients. We meet a remarkable cross-section of British society in the 1940s: gents with a 'merry twinkle', potential fifth-columnists, nervous spinsters, isolated farmers seeking 'a nice quiet affekshunate girl' and girls looking 'exactly' like Greta Garbo and Vivien Leigh, all desperately longing to find 'The One'. And thanks to Heather and Mary, they almost always did just that. A riveting glimpse of life and love during and after the war, Marriages Are Made in Bond Street is a heart-warming, touching and thoroughly absorbing account of a world gone by.