Saturday 25 March 2017

The Story Behind The Story

For the past eight weeks The People's Friend magazine has been publishing my WW2 serial "A Home From Home", and it's been a delight to see the fantastic illustration by Mandy Dixon which has accompanied each episode. Sadly the serial's come to its conclusion this week and I thought it would be good to write about the story behind the story.

Episode one
When I write historical fiction the ideas come from so many places and it's a challenge to weave them together into a story. "A Home From Home" was partly inspired by my family history. My mother grew up at Catchetts Farm in Norfolk during WW2 and though the farm wasn't a market garden like the one in the serial, I loved the name so I pinched it to name the fictional farm. The surname for the main characters, Bray, is also a family name.

My Dad used to tell me tales of his childhood adventures in wartime Norfolk, like the times when he and his friends had to hide behind hedges or walls when enemy planes were flying low over the countryside on the look out for people to shoot. I knew I had to include that in the serial.

Episode two - Phylly and Jimmy are safe from the enemy plane.


Episode three - not everyone likes the Italian POWs.
A few years ago while I was doing some research in the archives at the Imperial War Museum in London (which are brilliant and a place where you can spend hours and hours engrossed in all the wonderful diaries and letters), I came across a land girl's record of how she and some others working with her, caught who they thought was a spy on the farm, shutting him in a greenhouse while they sent for the police, only to find out he was part of the Free French on a navigation training exercise and not a spy at all. It was a gem of an idea for a story so I squirrelled it away hoping I'd be able to use it some day - and it inspired part of episodes four and five.

Episode four - a parcel of goodies from America.
Episode five - jitterbugging at the American base


If you saw the excellent BBC series "Wartime Farm" which was on a few years ago, where the historians reenacted life in WW2, you may have seen the part where Ruth Goodman tries her hand at reputed black marketeer tricks. All military issue petrol was dyed red to identify it from rationed fuel, so stolen army petrol had to be treated to remove the dye before it could be sold on the black market. In the programme they tried out the bread filtering method and it worked. The dodgy soldiers are discovered doing just this in episode six.

Picture from the above book - filtering the dyed petrol through a loaf.
 

Episode six - it's time to call in the police.


Episode seven - The Italians are singing in the orchard.


For the final episode, when Jimmy goes to the American airbase to celebrate Thanksgiving, I spoke to Pat Everson, a lovely lady who I met when I visited Seething Control Tower Museum see here. Pat was one of the children from her village who went to the Thanksgiving celebrations at Seething airbase during WW2 and kindly told me all about it.

The final episode - celebrations all round.
"A Home from Home" was my third attempt at writing a serial, the first two didn't make it but were published as People's Friend pocket novels. The two historical WW2 pocket novels have also been epublished as one book, though under a different name here.
I shall miss Phylly, Gracie and Jimmy and all the others in the serial, but I'm very happy to be writing the story of some new characters facing the challenges of life in WW2. This time the story is set in a London Auxilary Ambulance Station, focusing on the lives of Winnie, Bella and Frankie, whose story is set to run over several books. Here's the gorgeous cover of the first in the series - East End Angels.


2 comments:

  1. What an interesting post, Rosie. Thank you. And I still have the Friend Pocket Novels you wrote. xx

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    1. Glad you liked it Pat and still have those Pocket Novels, they're one of my favourite stories.

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