The Last Bookshop in London Study Guide

Madeline Martin is a New York Times, USA Today, and internationally bestselling author of historical fiction and historical romance. Most well-known for The Last Bookshop in London, Martin has also recently published several novels with Hanover Square Press, including The Secret Book Society and The Booklover’s Library in 2025 and 2024, respectively. Prior to becoming a full-time author, Martin worked a corporate career as a business analyst, having earned her Bachelor’s in Business Administration at Flagler College in St. Augustine, Florida. Currently, Martin is earning her MFA in Creative Writing at Drexel University in Philadelphia. Martin and her family call Jacksonville, Florida home. 

The novel closely follows World War II. In response to Hitler’s invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, British authorities order the evacuation of children from cities to the countryside, along with some adults, including those with disabilities, teachers, and mothers with preschool-aged children. On September 3, 1939, Britain declared war on Germany. Although the war was initially dubbed the “Phoney War” during the first eight months of limited major military action, Hitler invaded Denmark and Norway in April 1940; and Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France the next month. From September 1940 to May 1941, Nazi Germany attacked Britain in a bombing campaign known as The Blitz. During this time, British women banded together and supported the war effort as part of organizations like the Women’s Voluntary Service, which Mrs. Weatherford joins in the novel. Like Grace, many British women also served as air raid wardens, supporting blackout efforts, guiding the public to bomb shelters, fighting fires, administering first aid, conducting rescues, and more.

Martin cites Juliet Gardiner’s comprehensive nonfiction book, Wartime Britain 1939-1945, as a particularly helpful resource in her research of World War II, with its focus on the effects of the war on British civilians. Additionally, like The Last Bookshop in London, Martin’s two most recent books, The Secret Book Society and The Booklover’s Library, are works of historical fiction that celebrate the power of literature and strong female protagonists. The Secret Book Society brings these themes to a Victorian London setting while The Booklover’s Library homes in on a mother-daughter relationship during the onset of World War II in Nottingham, England. Eliza Knight’s The Mayfair Bookshop is another historical fiction novel that uses a London bookshop during World War II as a central aspect of the plot, offering a dual-narrative story of two women connected by the shop. Finally, The Paris Deception by Bryn Turnbull tells the story of two women who risk their lives to save banned art in Nazi-occupied France, in a manner similar to Mr. Evans in The Last Bookshop in London, who protects literature banned by Hitler. Within the novel itself, Grace reads classic works like George Eliot’s Middlemarch, The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, and Emma by Jane Austen.