As Sunday-evening telly goes, Call the Midwife couldn’t be more perfect: set in the late 1950s and early 1960s in a nursing convent in London’s East End, it is cosily nostalgic while dealing deftly with matters of life and death. The midwives are fun gals — one of them is even called Chummy, played by the irrepressible Miranda Hart — and the nuns are kind and sing beautifully. Very little in this world is so awful that a nice piece of cake and a cup of sugary tea won’t sort it out.
It has been BBC1’s most successful new drama series in more than a decade, and the best bit is that it’s true. The first two series — of four so far — were based on the real-life reminiscences of Jennifer Worth, the Jenny Lee of the programme, a middle-class woman from the home counties of the sort we know so well.
Only it turns out we didn’t know her at all. As revealed by her sister, Christine Lee, in a book to be published on Thursday, we could not have been more wrong. Jennifer, who died less than a year before the first episode of Call the Midwife was broadcast in 2012, suffered a traumatic childhood about which she never spoke. Now Christine feels the time is right to set the record straight.
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Her own book, The Midwife’s Sister, tells the story of how the idyllic early childhood of two little girls became an ordeal of cruelty and neglect after their parents’ divorce. Eventually, at the age of 14, the sensible Jenny of the television programme was kicked out of home by a cruel and abusive stepfather, only to be rescued at 15 by a married schoolmaster in his fifties. “I’m not going to judge that relationship,” says Christine, 77. “He was a positive figure and he saved her. He gave her an education.”
The sisters trained together as nurses at the Royal Berkshire Hospital, in Reading, but then their lives diverged, as Jennifer — the elder by three years — moved to Poplar and began the life we have been following so avidly, while Christine married a surgeon. Jennifer married in 1963, became a concert pianist and moved to Hertfordshire, where she raised two daughters.
Christine — who was Miss Pears in 1947 — has three children, two by a second marriage, and 10 grandchildren. She lives with her jack russell in the pretty Devon village of Otterton, 12 miles from Exeter, and is selling her charming period house to move locally. It has flagstone floors, mirrored doors and a wonderful old woodburner. The four bedrooms, dining room, sitting room and study are elegantly furnished, and there’s a self-contained two-bedroom cottage, currently tenanted.
Christine is a sculptor — she is best known for the 17ft fountain outside the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, in Stratford-upon-Avon — and there are examples of her work all over the house. Two themes predominate: swans and sisters.
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Her sister means a lot to her. Jennifer (never Jenny to her family) was 6ft tall, athletic and powerful, and loved walking and cycling. She looked after Christine in childhood. “When she died, I was in such pain, and missing her so much. That is why I started to write — to try to understand not just the sister of my childhood, but the sister I really wanted to be close to all my adult life.
“I was the only one who ever sent her a birthday card. She was very private. She’d ring me up every month or two, and now I keep wanting to have one of our awkward conversations again.”
If Christine wrote from emotional need, Jennifer wrote for financial reasons. “She’d read something in Nursing Times, saying somebody should write about midwifery the way James Herriot did about being a vet. She was always hard up, so she sat down and did it.” It was years before it became a bestseller. By contrast, Christine’s book found a publisher immediately, and it has already been reprinted ahead of this week’s publication, such is the interest in it.
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“Jennifer was very religious, and wanted to be a nun at one time — but, although she said she could manage poverty and chastity, she could never do obedience.”
The Midwife’s Sister by Christine Lee is published on Thursday (Pan £7.99). To buy it for £7.59, inc p&p, call 0845 271 2135 or visit thesundaytimes.co.uk/bookshop
Stantyway Farmhouse is for sale for £500,000 with Humberts; 01404 42456, humberts.com