Inspiration to write Sisters of Wartime England

Inspiration is magic.
I have always been fascinated by the achievements of women. Authors such as Jane Austen who wrote six novels in the early 19th century. Two hundred years later they are still giving millions of readers pleasure. Mary Shelley, at only eighteen, wrote Frankenstein.

One of my favourite authors is 20th century novelist, Mary Webb. She sets her novels in rural Shropshire. Gone to Earth inspired me to call my first novel Foxden Acres. Fox Den because I abhor fox hunting, as Mary Webb’s character Hazel Woodus does, and Acres because in WW2, Bess and a group of land girls turn the Foxden estate into arable land.

I admire women who worked or served in the First and Second World Wars. My late mother told me about her life in World War Two; her work, her sisters, dances she went to, and letters she wrote to servicemen overseas. (Mum had a Polish penfriend named Vanda – my middle name.)

Mum inspired me so much with stories of life in World War 2 that I set my novels in that period. I had too many stories for one book, so I plotted four: Four sisters, four wartime careers, and four loves. I named Bess, in Foxden Acres, after my favourite aunt. My aunt had a poor education in the 1920s. In Foxden Acres, Bess Dudley is a school teacher.

On one of many Sunday afternoons when my late mum was telling me about her life in the war, I asked her about her sisters, my aunts. Mum said her sister Marjorie dreamed of being a dancer, but her parents were too poor to pay for lessons. It saddened me that my aunt had not achieved her dream when I had. I’d been an actress for thirty years and felt Aunt Marjorie’s disappointment. So, as Margot Dudley in Destiny, her dream comes true as she rises from usherette to leading lady.

I set Destiny in a theatre on the Strand where I had worked and The Theatre Royal on The Haymarket, where I had played Iras (and Cleopatra) in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra.

While researching West End theatres in the war, I read that Mrs Henderson, owner of the variety and review theatre, The Windmill, said, “The Windmill will never close.” It didn’t, nor did the fictional theatre where Margot Dudley rose to fame. Mrs Henderson also sent girls out to entertain the troops, so in Destiny, Margot joined ENSA.

Betrayal, book 3 in the Sisters of Wartime England, is personal to me in the respect that I hate discrimination of any kind.
Mum told me that her sister Dorothy was a driver in the WAAF in WW2. She drove RAF crews – usually at breakneck speed, and for obvious reasons without lights – to their planes on unlit runways. Aunt Dorothy trained at WAAF Morcombe, which is why I based Claire Dudley there. The work my aunt did in the WAAF was important, but in my imagination, she speaks French, is recruited by the SOE, parachutes into France and works with the French Resistance. Perhaps that is my dream. Mine or hers, it’s what Claire Dudley does in Betrayal.

I named the youngest Dudley sister, Ena, after my mum. Mum worked in an engineering factory. One of her jobs was degreasing aeroplane magnetos. They weighed twenty-five pounds and had to be pulled down on heavy chains into tanks of acid. It was a dangerous job for which Mum was paid an extra shilling a week and given a bottle of milk every day. She hated milk and gave it to someone who was having a baby.
Mum was very good at mental arithmetic and, while I was writing Claire’s story, I watched a documentary about Bletchley Park and the top-secret work there. That was it! Factory girl, good with numbers – add transporting secret components to Bletchley, and a theft, and I had the bones of Redemption. Mum died before I had written Redemption. I think she would have approved.

And so, to LEGACY. It was the stories and the characters in the four previous books that inspired me to write Legacy. I wanted to bring the Dudley sisters together the way my first novel Foxden Acres did. I needed the Nazis in Foxden Acres and Destiny caught and punished, and Bess to know love again.

I bought a photograph of Misterton Hall, the country house where I set Foxden Acres and where my maternal grandfather had been Head groom between the wars. The photograph was grainy, so I telephoned the current owner of the hall and asked if she knew where I could buy a better one. She invited me to tea and suggested I take my own photograph, which I did. After tea, she took me to the stables where my grandfather had worked a hundred years earlier. She showed me the foaling stable and the tack room, which Grandfather would have known well.

My grandfather died before I was born. Ironic that he survived being shot in World War 1 only to die during World War 2 after faulty machinery in a local factory fell and cut through his leg.

There are more books to come in the Sisters of Wartime England series, as well as a Christmas sequel to Destiny, a collection of short stories, poetry and articles, and my memoir.

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FOXDEN ACRES

Gripping, epic and heartbreaking historical fiction set during WWII, about how adversity can change us in ways we never anticipate. Perfect for fans of Mandy Robotham, Glynis Peters and Rachel Wesson.

England, 1939. Bess Dudley knows what it means to lose what you love. As daughter of a groom at historic Foxden Hall, she has pushed herself to escape her humble background and train as a teacher. But just as Bess arrives in London to take up her first, hard-won post, the shadow of war sweeps over England. Bombs rip apart the city, and screeching air raids become a part of everyday life. The city is thrown into chaos and schools close, taking Bess’s dreams with them.

Then Bess learns that James, the handsome heir to Foxden Hall – who she’s loved since they played together in childhood – is engaged to Annabel Hadley. Annabel is everything Bess is not – wealthy and gentile – but James never seemed to care about those things before. It breaks Bess’s heart to see him promised to someone else.

Living in London is becoming more dangerous by the day, and Bess is persuaded to return home as a Land Girl – farming Foxden Acres for the war effort. It’s a far cry from the life she dreamed of – it’s back-breaking work and living in close proximity to James and Annabel seems unbearable.

But once she arrives, she finds that not only does her love for James remain, she’s becoming increasingly close to Annabel. In a world torn apart by violence, Bess must make an impossible decision, all while keeping a dark secret of her own. Is her love for James worth risking everything she’s built for herself from the ashes of her old life? And without James – without Foxden – does she have anywhere left to call home?

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