Amanda Cockrell looks at the history of accusations of communism as a political attack, particularly as they affected screenwriters in the US during the ‘Red Scare’ of the 1940s and 50s, and finds echoes today. Repression fears art, she concludes, and as writers it is our job to see that it does. Seventy-five years ago, […]
Beattie Cavendish and the Highland Hideaway by Mary-Jane Riley
In 1949 the Cold War is tightening its grip, spies lurk in every shadow, and the race for the atomic bomb is turning deadly. When GCHQ operative Beattie Cavendish is sent to a remote listening station in the Scottish Highlands, she finds its commander missing, the mission compromised, and whispers of a German spy ring. […]
Discovering Shanghai’s International Settlement
Shanghai, the ‘Pearl of the Orient’, was invaded by Japanese troops in 1941. The comfortable lives of the Westerners living in the city’s International Settlement were over. Deborah Swift looks back at the history of what happened, and her experiences of researching it for her latest novel, The Enemy’s Wife. At the end of my […]
Beattie Cavendish and the Highland Hideaway by Mary-Jane Riley
The Cold War is intensifying in 1949 and rumours abound that the Russians are close to creating an atomic bomb. Beattie Cavendish, special operative for a covert section of GCHQ, is sent to Scotland, to the listening station at Kilbray. Beattie’s arrival is greeted with suspicion by the station’s staff. She faces an uphill battle […]
Beattie Cavendish and the White Pearl Club by Mary-Jane Riley
In 1948 the shadow of war still lingers over Britain and Beattie Cavendish, former Secret Operations Executive agent, refuses to settle into civilian life. When offered an undercover role at the newly-formed GCHQ, the nerve centre of Britain’s intelligence network, she doesn’t hesitate. Her first mission is to infiltrate the powerful Bowen family and find […]
Bad Company on Coronation Close by Lizzie Lane
Bristol, 1942, and following the death of her controlling husband, Margaret Routledge is no longer the downtrodden church mouse she once was. Now she’s the talk of the Close, frequenting seedy pubs and clubs where men gather to pick up good-time girls. It seems Margaret is past redemption until she sees neighbour Jenny Crawford’s headstrong […]
The fall and rise of fascism
Catherine Hokin, author of The Girl Who Told the Truth, reflects on the rise and fall of Oswald Mosley’s fascist movement in England, how fascism continued after the end of the Second World War, and the lessons history can teach us. “Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.” That quote from […]
Syndrome K, the ‘disease’ that saved lives in occupied Rome
Sarah Freethy uncovers the extraordinary story of Syndrome K, the supposedly deadly disease that saved lives in German-occupied Rome in 1943. The Fatebenefratelli Hospital sits on an island in the south bend of the Tiber, in the heart of Rome. It looks as if a great ship beached itself between Trastevere and the Jewish Quarter, […]