The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
Post-War Orphans The Shilling Grange Series is about one woman’s struggle to run a children’s home in post-war Britain. I’ve long been interested in the changes brought in by Attlee’s reforming Labour government and writing a series set in an orphanage was a chance to...
I write a series about a Scotland Yard detective, DCI Frank Merlin operating in World War Two London. To date there are five books in the series with the fifth, Dead In The Water, coming out this month from Headline. My aim has always been to set the series against a...
You cannot seek to bribe nor twist - Thank God - the British journalist. But seeing what the man will do Unbribed, there’s no occasion to. That was Hilaire Belloc’s take on the British press and – although she has not quoted it – that appears to sum up the...
Catherine Hokin explores the shadows of World War II throughout the Hanni Winter series, and the third novel, The Girl in the Photo, continues this trend. Here Hanni's story continues when her husband, Freddy, recognises the face of his sister, lost to the Nazis, in...
Catherine Hokin, many congrats on the new book, the third in your Hanni Winter series. How hard was it to find inspiration for the plot of The Girl in Photo amid the horrors and misery of the holocaust? First of all, thank you! Writing a series with all the extended...
The concept of history as a mirror is a familiar one, but it can be a dangerous adage to follow. For novelists dealing with the Third Reich, a period which can feel as soaked in fake news as our own, it is particularly troublesome. Most of us are aware of Goebbels and...
Tom Petch, congratulations on the new book. Why write about the SAS? The story of the origins of the SAS in the Second World War interested me because I knew there was more to the story than David Stirling’s account of his pitch to GHQ Cairo in 1941. I’d been a junior...
Books Click on any of the books covers below to either buy or get more information on Amazon Articles Click on the links below to read the full article [dpdfg_filtergrid custom_query="advanced" multiple_cpt="post,short_stories" use_taxonomy_terms="on"...
In All the Courage We Have Found, Carly Schabowski brings us a tale of adventure, bravery and fear that celebrates those trying to survive across Europe during The Second World War. Written through three perspectives, our main character, Kasia, travels to France to...
John McKay, what prompted you to choose the period that you wrote your first book in? I have been interested in the two world wars from an early age. I used to read Battle Comic and collected the Commando graphic books as a child. My interest grew with the more I read...
