Minor Characters
Corporal Nettle
One of Robbie’s two comrades during his time fighting in France and Belgium. To write Robbie’s portion of the story, Briony researches Robbie’s wartime experience by finding and communicating with Nettle.
Corporal Mace
Another of Robbie’s comrades during the war.
Fiona
One of Briony’s fellow nursing novices, with whom Briony strikes up a friendship. Fiona is from a well-to-do London family.
Leon Tallis
Leon is the oldest Tallis child. He plays a small role in the book; he is visiting home with his friend Paul Marshall when Paul rapes Lola, and he reappears as a doddering old man at the Tallis family reunion that ends the novel.
Nurse Drummond
Briony’s stern supervisor at the hospital where Briony is first positioned.
Danny Hardman
A Tallis family servant whom Cecilia and Robbie wrongly suspect of being Lola’s true rapist.
Old Hardman
Danny Hardman’s father. He is a Tallis family servant.
Betty
A Tallis family servant who helps around the kitchen.
Hermione and Cecil Quincey
The parents of Lola, Pierrot, and Jackson. Hermione is Emily Tallis’s sister, and she and Cecil are embroiled in an unpleasant, public divorce. For this reason, their children are sent to live with the Tallises.
Grace Turner
Robbie Turner's mother, and the charlady (cleaning woman) for the Tallis family.
Ernest Turner
Robbie Turner's father and Grace Turner's husband, who quit his job as the Tallis gardener and abandoned his family.