Olive Martel

Olive Martel (played by Antonia Pemberton) is the wife of Dr Philip Martel, and mother of Clare and Clive in LWT's series Enemy at the Door.

Biography
Olive and Philip have been married for over twenty years by the time the series starts. Olive is a housewife, but also acts as unofficial receptionist for Dr Martel's practice (held at his house). Prior to the war, she seems to have been a very social person, and probably also conscious of social position, as she enjoys various attempts to have some company, while Clare, when angry, taunts her with, "Wouldn't go down well at the tennis club, would it?"

Clare and Philip also tend to try and protect Olive, and when she realises that they may both be arrested at the end of S1, one of her first shocked reactions is to ask, "What will happen to me?" However, she is also practical, and despite occasional differences with Clare, her daughter confides more deeply in her than in her father. She also has an instinct for Clive's presence on the Island, rushes to comfort Helen on Peter's arrest (despite Philip and Clare's arrest), collects wool for Helen's children's charity, and manages to continue running the house and feeding the family under increasingly difficult circumstances.

She and Dieter Richter have also met on at least two occasions and have an uneasy respect for each other, and she turns to him for help when Clare goes missing.

Behind the scenes
The tie-in novelisation gives Olive a friend unmentioned by the TV series, a Mrs Dorothy "Dot" Tannenbaum of North Carolina (formerly of Guernsey), to whom she writes to in the first week of every month:

''... the distance between them in miles had somehow drawn the two women closer together in spirit than they had ever been during the years Dorothy lived in Guernsey. She was the only person in the world to whom Mrs Martel dared reveal every facet of her life with total honesty.''

It goes on to say that she had lost her virginity to a total stranger in a French railway carriage, had a childhood asthma and allergy to cats and animal fur, along with migraines, which she lost as an adult. It also describes her as "...handsome, in a polished way, an Annunciation angel with blue eyes. Her features were too serene and regular to be beautiful.  But those who judged her character by her appearance soon discovered their mistake."