It's getting closer!

[Susan Boulton]

So it begins!

Advance Reviews: Hand of Glory by Susan Boulton

 

[Stephen Palmer]

Nice! I didn't realise this was a WW1/post WW1 book.

Did you do a lot of research? I did for mine, and was gobsmacked by some of the tales I turned up. Truly the past is a different country...

 

[Susan Boulton]

Nice! I didn't realise this was a WW1/post WW1 book.

Did you do a lot of research? I did for mine, and was gobsmacked by some of the tales I turned up. Truly the past is a different country...

Tonnes! I found that you had to cut through a lot of myths, and in some cases the illusion of the doomed Tommy, almost a tragic, romantic image, that in some ways belittled what the men did and went through.

I saw a post on the net about the BBC series, "Crimson Fields," which was about a stationary hospital a few miles behind the lines. The poster was going on about how the nurses wouldn't be boiling bandages, or fussing about having clean white cuffs and an apron and horror, there being cups and saucers for tea. Yet, all these things were true. It was a very different country as you say.

Also a lot of Hand of Glory is set in my home town, which I thought I knew very well. I found I didn't. A lot of the buildings I thought had been there since the year dot, were built in the 1930's 10 or more years after my story is set. I spent a lot of time on the website Staffordpasttrack going through photos, also at the library looking at the old fashioned mircofis (sp) copies of newspapers to find out what was happening in the two week window that the climax of my story is set.

It was fun and I have wealth of info to take my characters on another adventure, not a sequel, another adventure with secondary characters as the main ones.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

I couldn't believe the 1914/15 stuff, before the sheer hatred set in - playing games in No-Mans Land, message sending, newspapers, the humour, etc etc. Incredible stuff.

 

[Susan Boulton]

I couldn't believe the 1914/15 stuff, before the sheer hatred set in - playing games in No-Mans Land, message sending, newspapers, the humour, etc etc. Incredible stuff.

If you haven't already you need to read this. It is the Wipers Times. A newspaper published by the soldiers for soldiers. Blackadder has nothing on this, and it was published a good 100 years ago. The Wipers Times: Amazon.co.uk: Christopher Westhorp: 9781844862337: Books

 

[Stephen Palmer]

Yes, I remember that from research - didn't actually buy it though. I might, however... the 'Times of Ypres'. A great deal of the opening sections of my upcoming The Conscientious Objector is set around Ypres, 1914-15.