A ‘forgotten masterpiece’ of a novel, in which a former Kimmeridge schoolgirl foresaw the horrors of Nazi Germany, has been republished – and is proving a worldwide success.
Sylvia ‘Sally’ Carson, who grew up in Gaulter Cottages in the Dorset village of Kimmeridge, first published her novel Crooked Cross in 1934, but in 2025 it was republished, adapted for BBC Radio 4’s programme A Book at Bedtime, and a stage version has now opened in New York.
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Sally Carson grew up in Gaulter Cottages in the early 20th century
Foresaw a dark future for Europe
Sally lived at number three Gaulter Cottages from 1906 with her mother Charlotte and older sister Lavinia, having moved there from Surrey when her mother was widowed.
The row of cottages at Gaulter Gap was originally built in the 1860s as homes for miners who were brought to Kimmeridge to dig out bituminous shale which was burnt as fuel, known as Kimmeridge coal.
After leaving Kimmeridge School at the age of 14, Sally went on to work as a publisher’s reader and taught dance.
During the late 1920s and early 1930s she frequently went to stay in Bavaria with friends, where she was horrified to witness the rise of Hitler’s national socialist party.
In her time there, she foresaw a dark and violent future for Europe and voiced those fears in a 1934 novel, Crooked Cross, which predicted the terrifying scale of the Nazi threat.
PERSEPHONE PRESS
Sally Carson, pictured dancing in the snow in Bavaria during one of her many visits there to stay with friends
Crooked Cross lavished with praise
The book tells the story of the Kluger family in a small town near Munich, set over six months from Christmas Eve, 1932, shortly before Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany.
The family is struggling to make ends meet, but is looking forward to the marriage of their daughter Alexa to a young doctor, Moritz – until his Jewish background jeopardises their engagement.
Over a period of just half a year, as Moritz loses his job when a Jewish boycott spreads across Germany, the brutal realities of the Nazi regime become clear and tear apart Alexa’s family, as her brothers are seduced by Hitler’s nationalist message.
Crooked Cross – the title referring to the swastika adopted as a symbol by Hitler – was lavished with praise when it was published in 1934 and adapted as a stage play by Sally.
MINT THEATER COMPANY
Sally’s stage version of her book has been revived in New York in autumn 2025
Censored by Government
But although it was remarkably prophetic about the horrors which were in store, it was controversial at a time when Europe was trying to appease Hitler. It was censored by the British Government and eventually faded into obscurity.
Sally wrote two sequels, The Prisoner in 1936 and A Traveller Came By two years later, before she died of breast cancer aged just 39 in June 1941, as the violence she had foreseen raged across Europe.
Her books might have been forgotten forever had it not been for the founder of Persephone Books, Nicola Beauman, who discovered reports of Crooked Cross while researching pre World War Two British women writers.
Once she’d tracked down a rare remaining copy she was struck that such an extraordinary and important novel could have been lost to history and republished it to coincide with the 80th anniversary of the end of World War Two in 2025.
Sally Carson’s home during her childhood years was a far cry from horrors she saw in 1930s Germany
“Beautifully written, impossible to put down”
Francesca Beauman, Editorial Director at Persephone Books, said:
“Crooked Cross is everything a Persephone book seeks to be – beautifully written, impossible to put down and thought provoking.
“To have the opportunity to rescue this literary masterpiece from being entirely lost is an immense privilege. As the lessons history has taught us seem worryingly close to being forgotten, it felt like the right time to share it once again with the world.
“Crooked Cross had been adapted by Sally as a stage script in the 1930s, but quickly earned the attention of the Lord Chamberlain’s office, which had to approve public plays until 1968.”
The Old School in Kimmeridge, near today’s Clavells restaurant
“Determined to revive Sally’s legacy”
Francesca added:
“Among other changes, the government called for every ‘Heil Hitler’ to be cut from the script, but even in this censored form, the play went on to draw protest from right wing factions in Britain.
“Many viewed it as anti-German propaganda and argued it was too negative about the Nazi government.
“Persephone Books was determined to bring Crooked Cross back into print and revive Sally Carson’s forgotten legacy.
“We held our own revival of the play, with a fully cast, professional public reading of the script in April above our bookshop in Bath, the first time audiences have heard it since the curtain came down on the original London production.”
BBC
BBC Radio 4 adapted Sally’s book as their August Book At Bedtime
Adapted for BBC radio
The BBC featured Crooked Cross on its literary programme Front Row on Monday 8th September 2025 and also adapted the book for radio, broadcasting it on A Book At Bedtime over ten parts in August.
BBC Radio 4 presenter Samira Ahmed said:
“The rise of Nazism in 1930s Germany continues to generate fresh historical scrutiny, but fiction from the time can be just as revealing.
“The Crooked Cross by Sally Carson has become a surprise literary hit second time around, exploring six months of a Bavarian family in an idyllic village near Munich and how quickly their family is transformed by the rise of Hitler.
“It was eerily prescient, published in 1934 when many Britons and even Germans didn’t realise the full extent of what was happening, and it saw so far into the future.”
The road through Kimmeridge would have looked identical when Sally walked to school in the 1910s (minus the traffic cone!)
“Like a sinister version of Heidi”
Samira added:
“I was really interested by how the beauty of this community is always there, it is almost like a sinister version of ‘Heidi’ in many ways and you get a real sense that Sally Carson knew and loved these mountains.
“She saw with her own eyes what the country was going through – there’s a character, the British junior diplomat Michael Reader, whose point of view is so interesting.
“Michael witnesses the cultish transformation of the everyday, such as when the chime of the church is switched to the anthem of the Nazi Party, and remarks how he finds the sight of Nazi flags everywhere so discomforting.
“When the book came out in 1934 it got rave reviews, with one newspaper saying it was ‘more truthful than telegraphed reports, fairer than propaganda and infinitely more interesting than either’. I found it fascinating and was really pleased to have read it.”
Sally Carson’s second novel, The Prisoner, is due to be republished by Persephone Books in April 2026, and her stage version of Crooked Cross opened in New York on Saturday 20th September 2025.
The Kimmeridge coastline has changed little in the past century
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