Ann sketches a wedding gown for Doris to make by altering her mother’s old wedding gown. While Miriam is searching for work, Ann’s friend Doris announces her engagement. Before she approaches Hartnell, Miriam decides to brush up on her English for a couple of months.

Miriam looks for work, but all the English designers rudely turn her away. She arrives in England with a letter of recommendation from Dior, the famous French designer, for her embroidery. She assumed a false identity during the war and was arrested for aiding the Resistance not because she was a Jew.

She is a Jew who survived the Ravensbrück concentration camp. Meanwhile, Miriam has just arrived in England from France. Ann makes plans to plant her gift from the queen, a pot of white heather from Balmoral, the royal estate in Scotland, in her garden in the spring. Ann, a senior embroiderer for Norman Hartnell, and her fellow workers have just finished a commission from the royal household, a large selection of gowns for the upcoming royal tour of South Africa. This guide uses the 2019 paperback edition by HarperCollins publishers.Ĭontent Warning: The source material features a depiction of sexual assault.Īnn and Miriam’s stories begin in England during the winter of 1947, one of the coldest on record. She holds a doctorate in British economic and social history from the University of Oxford. Jennifer Robson is a best-selling author of six novels, all set in and around the World Wars.

The gown a novel of the royal wedding