November 1940, and Lieutenant Daniel Nichols, a former pacifist turned crusader, is wounded taking part in the Royal Navy’s carrier born air raid on the Italian Battle Fleet in Taranto. Six months later Sándor Braun, a British double agent, escorts a Japanese delegation around Taranto and discovers that they are planning a similar attack. But […]
From Taranto to Pearl Harbor – spies and inspiration
To mark the anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, Alan Bardos explains how uncovering a tale of spies helped him link Britain’s attack on Taranto in 1940 to the Japanese strike – and inspired his new novel, Rising Tide. I have always been captivated by the daring and skill of the Fleet […]
10 Scotland Street by Leslie Hills
10 Scotland Street – the story of an Edinburgh home and its cast of booksellers, silk merchants, sailors, preachers, politicians, cholera and coincidence and its widespread connections over two centuries across the globe. 10 Scotland Street by Leslie Hills is published on 1 December, 2023. With a foreword by Val McDermid, this is her first […]
The Pantomime Murders by Fiona Veitch Smith
December, 1929. Snow is falling, and Miss Clara Vale is wrapped up against the cold as she braves the icy streets of Newcastle in her latest investigation. When a young actress from the touring pantomime of Cinderella arrives at her door, Clara isn’t sure what to make of her request. Sybil Langford, the legendary fairy […]
Vita and the Birds by Polly Crosby
1938: Lady Vita Goldsborough lives in the menacing shadow of her controlling older brother, Aubrey. But when she meets local artist Dodie Blakeney, the two women form a close bond, and Vita finally glimpses a chance to be free. 1997: Following the death of her mother, Eve Blakeney returns to the coast where she spent […]
The Orphans on the Train by Gill Thompson
1939, and a girl with auburn hair looks anxiously out of the train window, watching the mountains of Europe pass by. War is on the horizon at home, and Kirsty finds herself heading to neutral Hungary to help in a school for Jewish children. Little does she know that in leaving everything behind, she is […]
Why I started a podcast – and what I learnt
Kate Thompson, the author and podcaster, looks at why she began From the Library with Love, the podcast series in which she interviews Britain’s wartime generation. What lessons has she learned during the past six months? I was given a piece of advice recently by a female writer far wiser than me: we all need […]
The voices of the Second World War
How do you bring the voices of a period such as the Second World War to life for podcast listeners – without using cliches such as air raid sirens and Churchillian clips? Ros Taylor writes about a “remarkable” source for what people were really thinking about during WWII, and how she made archive material into […]