That Burning Summer, by Lydia Syson - just published in the US by Sky Pony Press

Set during the Battle of Britain, this book deals not with the undoubted heroism of the Few - the pilots and crew of the RAF - but with those who, for one reason or another, came to to the decision that they could not take an active part in fighting the war.

Sixteen year old Peggy's father, a conscientious objector, is one of these. He has been interned, and Peggy, her younger brother Ernest and her mother have come to live with Aunt Myra in an isolated farmhouse in Romney Marsh.

Ernest, a serious, thoughtful boy, is desperately anxious about what will happen if the Germans invade. Peggy is determinedly keeping her spirits up, in the face of the obvious disapproval of people in the village of her father's principled but unpopular stance, and despite Ernest's constant anxiety and need for reassurance.

Then a plane crashes into the marsh. Its pilot is Henryk, a young Polish airman who has joined the RAF after fleeing Poland after the German invasion in order to continue to fight. (Many Polish aircrew escaped, first to France and then to England. They were noted for their daring and bravery - but at the end of the war, Poland was shamefully betrayed, and the Polish aircrew were not acknowledged in the victory celebrations for fear of antagonising Stalin.) Henryk has been through a harrowing time: traumatised, he decides he can no longer continue to fight, and he goes into hiding. One day he approaches the farm for food - and runs into Peggy. She finds herself helping him, and she becomes more and more drawn to him. But should she be aiding a deserter? And should she be pressuring Ernest to do the same? There are difficult decisions to be made, with no easy answers.

The novel explores unusual territory for a book about the Second World War. Pilots who could no longer cope with what they were required to do could be accused of LMF - lack of moral fibre -and ignominiously treated - or if they deserted, they would be court-martialled. And yet they were under almost unbearable pressure; that summer, they pretty much alone stood between Britain and defeat. (A few years later, my uncle, a boy of 19 and a rear gunner in the RAF, agreed to do a sortie for a friend - he had done his required number of flights and should have been on leave. He confided to my mother the night he left home to go back to base that he was afraid; he didn't want to go, he had a bad feeling about this trip. He went, and was killed - lost over Germany. One, of course, of many.)

And there's Ernest, who is so anxious, so afraid that there might be an invasion. From this end of the war, we know the outcome - we know that Hitler never did invade. It's so easy to forget that at the time, invasion was a real and terrifying threat.

But as well as all this, That Burning Summer is a tender coming of age and love story. It's beautifully written and a sensitive exploration of a relatively unexplored area of the second world war - do read it!

'Of shoes and ships and sealing wax...'

Actually this post is about none of the things in the title - but like the Walrus's list of conversational topics, it's a bit of a mish-mash. I've been back and forth to various places over the last few weeks, and there are a smattering of things I'd like to share.

The first visit was to my niece in London. We ate a lot of cake, but in between pursuing this very important piece of reearch, we went to see an exhibition of paintings at Dulwich Picture Gallery, by Eric Ravilious, who was an official war artist in the Second World War. His paintings are water colours, but  they're very unlike most water colours. He is fascinated by the juxtaposition of landscape and man-made, particularly industrial objects, but also paints the most intriguing interiors. He uses small, precise brushstrokes to create the most wonderful luminosity in skies and seas, and finds beauty in places of no obvious loveliness, such as war offices and submarine interiors. For more about him, please see this post by Lydia Syson.

There is a rather sweet little coda to this. My niece was carrying her nine week old baby son in a sling, and he was the subject of many admiring glances. One elderly gentleman stopped and smiled. 'The best thing in the whole exhibition,' he said quietly.

Dangerous Work at Low Tide

My niece also has a two year old whose birthday I had missed, so we went to the very wonderful children's bookshop in Herne Hill, Tales on Moon Lane. My great-nephew likes buses and trains, and he likes things that rhyme. I found this book by Michael Rosen. I can't do a proper review of it, because I only had a speedy look through in the bookshop before handing it over - but apparently it went down an absolute storm with Ben. That Michael Rosen will clearly go far, as will his illustrator, Gillian Taylor.

My niece also recommended some detective novels to me. They're by Anya Lipska. Set in London, they're about an unlikely crime-fighting duo - a small, blonde policewoman called Natalie Kershaw, and a Polish fixer/investigator called Janusz Kiszka. They'tr terrific - clever plots, funny, and with great characters - beside the two mains, there's Oskar, Kiszka's loyal, wisecracking but slightly ineffectual best friend. I've read all three - the first is Where The Devil Can't Go - and my only complaint is that the last one finishes with a heartbreaking hint of what could happen next - and probably a lengthy wait till the next book. Sigh.

I read the last of these books in Dorset, where we went for a few days and walked on the Jurassic cliffs and sat on the Jurassic shore. Here are some pictures. It was lovely. Enjoy your summer, wherever you are!

Above and below: looking east from Thorncombe Beacon

Looking west towards Lyme Regis

Eype

Liberty's Fire, by Lydia Syson

Like Lydia Syson's previous books, A World Between Us and That Burning Summer, this novel has as its subject love in a time of conflict. The first was set in the Spanish Civil War - about which probably most of us know a little, but not very much. The second was set in WW2 - but in a seldom-explored corner of it: it deals with conscientious objectors. (We know a good deal about the fate of conscientious objectors in the First World War, but we hear far less about them in the second one - perhaps because we have come to see the first conflict as a largely shambolic bloodbath, whereas the second is broadly seen as a 'just war'.)

Liberty's Fire is set during the Paris Uprising of 1871, when the workers, starving and desperate after being besieged by the Prussians, declared that the people would govern the city through a Commune. It's a time about which I knew virtually nothing: after reading the book, I know a great deal more!

However, Lydia Syson is far too skilled a writer to overload the book with historical context. In the foreground of the novel are four vivid and appealing characters, and it is the stories of their relationships and the shifts they have to make to survive the turbulent times that drive the novel forward.

Anatole is a young violinist. I'm not sure that we're ever given a physical description of him, but it becomes clear that he is very attractive, in his personality as well as in his appearance. He has tremendous joie de vivre, and he's the kind of person whose charm and enthusiasm make him a magnet for other people. He is vaguely aware of this, but almost entirely guileless; impulsive, warm, generous - but perhaps a little careless about the effect he has on others. This is particularly so in the case of Jules, a young, well-to-do American with whom Anatole shares an apartment. Jules is a photographer, which means among other things that he is invited to be present at some of the significant events of the uprising - he is a witness. It quickly becomes clear to the reader that Jules is in love with Anatole. What's less clear is how aware Anatole is of this. He seems to have some sense of it, but chooses not to explore too deeply what Jules' feelings are for him; perhaps it's more convenient for him that way. Jules is a marvellous character, very subtly drawn.

The Commune has thrown out the normal conventions of social intercourse, and so when Anatole meets a working-class girl called Zephyrine, he is able to get to know her. They fall in love. Zephyrine is gripped by the ideology of the communards, by the idea of freedom and justice for all, and Anatole is swept along by her enthusiasm - only for both of them to see that neither side has a monopoly on cruelty and injustice. The fourth member of the quartet is Marie, a singer and friend of Anatole. She is ambitious, and she sees that the Commune may give her unexpected opportunities. But her brother is a soldier with the Nationalist (opposing) forces; as far as she knows he's a prisoner of war. She is desperate to help him, but she finds that her attempts to do so lead her into murky moral territory.

So the scene is set for conflicts of all kinds. Lydia Syson writes about all of them with skill, but it's her descriptions of the fighting which, as a writer, particularly impress me. I've written about battle scenes, and it's not easy; unless you can find good first-person accounts, how can you really imagine what it was like to be under a particular kind of fire? Well, Syson makes an utterly convincing job of it. Here, she writes of an explosion at a cartridge factory:

...the cloud had a capricious, uncapturable beauty: innumerable silvery ostrich plumes, continually unfurling, whirling, twisting in the air, revolving round themselves and others, endlessly and speedily rolling in and out of one another...And from the sky fell burning timber, molten lead, empty bullet cases and human remains.

The Commune only lasted a few short months, and the communards were ferociously punished. The issues are complex, but Syson handles them adeptly. And as we see how this movement by the people and for the people starts with passionate idealism, but becomes mired in the politics of necessity, perhaps we may reflect with perplexity on how the same story continues to be told - over, and over, and over again.

The book is marketed at young adults, but as is so often the case, I think it's also entirely suitable for 'old' adults!

History Girls

It's funny, isn't it - up here on the hill, you never see another writer from one month to the next. And then, all of a sudden, off you go to two writerly gatherings in a week. (What would be a good collective name for a bunch of writers? A gossiperation? A twitterance? Answers on a postcard, please, or better, in the comments section.)

So after Folly Farm, I had a few days to catch my breath (and do some work) and then it was off to London to meet up with the History Girls. Amazingly, there was a blue plaque outside the building beside the Thames where we first met three years ago - who knew we were that famous?

The History Girls is a group of writers of historical fiction and non-fiction. We each blog once a month - my date is on the 16th. Since we first met, there have been quite a lot of changes, so this weekend many of us were meeting for the first time. Here are some of us. I'm fourth from the right at the back.

Photo taken by Isabel Adomakoh Young

We had an amazing tea: -

Lydia Syson, writer of This Burning Summer, admiring our beautiful cake

We admired the view: -

And, of course, we talked! It was particularly good to meet the writers of four books I've read and very much enjoyed over the last year or so. Lydia Syson has written A World Between Us, which is set in the Spanish Civil War, and more recently, That Burning Summer. This is a love story set in the Second World War, when the sky above the south of England hummed with the drone of war planes. Unusually, it explores the situation of conscientious objectors - who are often now discussed in relation to the First World War, but far less frequently in relation to the Second.

Liz Fremantle (just right of centre in the picture, with blonde hair and a stripy top) writes books set in the Tudor period. The one I read was Queen's Gambit, which is about Katherine Parr, Henry V111's last wife. It's a subtle portrait of an intelligent, interesting woman, who becomes the unwilling object of the aging King's attentions. The writing is beautiful:

'Queen's gambit accepted,' says the King, taking her white pawn, rolling it between fat fingers. 
        He looks at her, sunken eyes flashing, his breath wheezing as if there is no space for air in him. 
        'I could make you Queen,' he declares.
        Droplets of spit land next to her ear.
        'You tease, Your Majesty,' she says.
        'Perhaps,' he growls. 'Perhaps not.'

Clare Mulley's book, The Spy Who Loved, is a non-fiction book. (Clare is on the extreme right of the photo.) If you'd written it as fiction, a kindly editor would probably have sighed and pointed out that it was ridiculously far-fetched - a beautiful Polish girl becomes a spy for the British in the Second World War and does outrageously brave things: like, if memory serves, walking into a German prison to rescue a French resistance worker - and succeeding - and breaking lots of hearts along the way. Really? Well, yes - really. The girl was called Krystyna Skarbek/Christine Granville, and the book is gripping: I think it's always fascinating to read about extraordinary courage - especially if, like me, you're a complete wuss.

The fourth book, by Imogen Robertson, is called The Paris Winter. It's set in Paris in 1909, in a world of artists and emigres. To begin with, it seems like a coming-of-age novel, interesting particularly because of its setting. But it turns into something much darker: a sort of Gothic thriller, with dastardly villains and peaks of heart-stopping tension. (Well, no hearts were actually stopped in the reading of this book so far as I know - but you get the picture.) This is one to curl up and lose yourself in, with the fire flickering and a glass of something warm by your side. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Finally, a mention of Daughters of Time (you can get to it from the revolving display up above on the right). This is an anthology of stories about significant women through the ages, written by History Girls, edited by Mary Hoffman and published by Templar. I have a story in it about Aethelflaed, who was the daughter of Alfred the Great, and who became a leader in her own right - the Lady of the Mercians. My story is about the transition between the two roles. Katherine Langrish writes about Julian of Norwich - no easy task, to make the life of someone who spent most of her time sealed up in a cell into a story, but successfully done here. Celia Rees explores the last days of Emily Davison, the suffragette who threw herself under the King's horse. Penny Dolan writes about Mary Wollstonecraft, Joan Lennon about fossil hunter Mary Anning - oh, I could go on. What a good present this would make...!

So there it is. Normal reviewing service will be resumed soon - except there's something called Christmas looming up, isn't there? Hm...