Where’s the Empire? Loss, Geopolitical Agency and Imperial Longing in Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs Series

The chapter argues that Jacqueline Winspear’s historical crime fiction series with its female protagonist and detective Maisie Dobbs offers a ‘fantasy’ of female geopolitical agency. While the series is set in the interwar period when women’s roles in the geopolitical arena were more limited than in today’s world, the novels highlight female agency and mobility. The chapter further proposes that, through Maisie’s investigations, the series not only invites its readers to consider the effects of war on the individual and national psyche, but also creates spatial uncertainty as to the position and existence of the British Empire, which leads to a discourse of nostalgia in the novels. This discourse reflects contemporary concerns of Britain within and beyond the borders of Europe.