IT MIGHT be easy to lose hope after the Brexit referendum, Labour’s election defeat and the government’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic but not so with Sue McCormick’s debut novel.

A bite-size introduction to some of the last century’s radical history, it places friendship at its core as it interweaves the lives of four women.

Daisy is an illiterate music hall performer in Edwardian London and Nora a millworker from Salford who nurses at [[{"fid":"23541","view_mode":"inlineright","fields":{"format":"inlineright","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false},"link_text":null,"type":"media","field_deltas":{"1":{"format":"inlineright","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false}},"attributes":{"class":"media-element file-inlineright","data-delta":"1"}}]]Gallipoli during WWI. Charlie is a middle-class girl whose eyes are opened to social inequalities when she visits the slums owned by her family in the 1930s, while Margaret worked in New Labour’s press office during the Iraq war.