The Amber Shadows Playlist

So here are my favourite tracks inspiring or featuring in bits of the book. I thought this time I’d do them in reverse order of favourites/importance/not sure what kind of reverse order but anyway here it is…

10. Starting out with one of the more obscure tunes in the book, The Merry Widow waltz is the melody Honey says she had going round inside her head the last time she went on night shift…

9. Keep em Flying. This plays at the airmen’s dance scene. How can you not swing when it comes on…?

8. Mrs Steadman likes to hum this while cranking her mangle. It’s by Jimmy Kennedy and Michael Carr.

7. A Glenn Miller classic. You will know this even if you think you don’t.

6. Though Suspicion is the film referred to most in the book, in fact (although it was made 3 years later) this is my favourite Hitchcock soundtrack of all time – and Spellbound is probably just as much of an inspiration for the storyline as Suspicion. I love this piano concerto version, I think it’s very Rachmaninov. I also like this recording because it has a nice picture of the composer Miklos Rozsa looking dapper.

5. Love this recording of The Firebird, though there are some quite nice live ballet versions on YouTube as well.

4. A bit of a damning indictment on the husbands of war that this was written…but anyway, it’s Moira and Reuben’s theme song.

3. My fave of the Glenn Miller numbers…it’s just got that swing…

2. Another Jimmy Kennedy classic, made for singing along….

1. And finally this one’s my favourite song of all the 30s/40s tunes I know, and I think it’s probably the theme song of the book too. The band play it just before Moira leaves the dance. (also, Helen Forrest, give me that dress.)