There will be a Short Interval

Sergeant Jebb - S.J. as he is called - is a distinguished British historian. He has shaped his life pretty much as he wished, subordinating personal responsibilities and professional rewards to his private standards of integrity and scholarship. Or so he believes, until a crucial few days force him into confrontations of a sort he has never faced before. For one thing, his doctor tells him he is seriously ill and must undergo a new and delicate operation if he is to survive. And he is deeply troubled about his twenty-year-old son Simon. The boy's ex-mistress has killed herself in a blaze of notoriety that implicates Simon in moral responsibility of her act. The more father and son talk about it, the more distressed S.J. is by Simon's inability to see this; the more he ponders his role in shaping Simon into the man he is. S.J., newly conscious of his mortality, comes into renewed conflict with his family, and Simon is bitterly and dangerously involved. The play of character, of motive and of conflicting values that always intrigues Storm Jameson makes There Will Be a Short Intervalan extraordinarily moving and provocative novel.

Storm Jameson (1891- 1986) born to a North Yorkshire family of shipbuilders. Jameson's fiery mother, who bore three girls, encouraged Storm (christened Margaret Storm) to pursue an academic education. After being taught privately and at Scarborough municipal school she won one of three county scholarships which enabled her to read English Literature at Leeds University. She then went on to complete an MA in European Drama at King's College London.

During her career Jameson wrote forty-five novels, numerous pamphlets, essays, and reviews, in an effort to make money. Her personal life suffered, and her first marriage to schoolmaster Charles Douglas Clarke was an unhappy one. After they divorced in 1925, Jameson went on to marry Guy Chapman, a fellow author, and remained with him despite her apparent rejection of normal domestic life.

Storm Jameson was always politically active, helping to publish a Marxist journal in the British section of the International Union of Revolutionary Writers in 1934 and attending anti-fascist rallies.