As many of you know, I have been writing about the women in wartime for some 20 years now, in both fiction and non-fiction. In my newsletters I have written about the way in which women did more than simply keep the home fires burning – for example, during WW1 a letter posted in Britain to a soldier entrenched in France could reach him within a couple of days, not only due to the swift processing of mail in Britain, but in France. A forces post office set up in Le Havre at war’s outset had extended to encompass some five acres by war’s end...
Women in a Man’s World
Those of you who have read A Sunlit Weapon, my latest novel, may remember a small point made about the carburetor in the Merlin engine, as used on the Spitfire and Hurricane aircraft. In the early days of the war, that carburetor had a dangerous fault. When the aircraft went into a dive – a common tactic during an air-battle or dogfight if the pilot wanted to avoid being shot down – the carburetor would flood, causing the aircraft to stall. Young pilots were being killed time and time again due to this fault. For those who managed to get...
Welcome to WomenSong
Many of you will remember that some years ago I began a blog dedicated to women’s history, women’s lives and women’s accomplishments. My intention was to focus on the little known heroines of the past and present—with many of those heroines being women who went about their lives without ever thinking of themselves as anything but “ordinary.” After a while family responsibilities began to take more and more of my time, along with my work as a professional writer, so the blog was pushed to a back burner and eventually taken offline. But I...
The WomenSong Blog is my indulgence—a chance to write about women’s lives from the past to the present. I plan to write not only about women whose names are well known, but women with unheralded accomplishments. Many visitors to this blog will know that I have been interested in women’s history since childhood—since I created my first book at the age of eight. It was a task set in class, for each pupil to produce a “topic book” on something we were interested in. We had to not only research and write the content (though the word “research” was not used—instead it was called “Finding out”), and we created the cover in our art and craft lessons, finally stitching the pages and boards together. Finally we had to present our topic to the class. I loved making that book—and it opened a window for me. Though the women in my “Famous Women” topic book were all well known, as time went on, I became equally interested in women whose accomplishments had been forgotten or never acknowledged. So, as noted, this is my indulgence, a chance to write about the lives of women. I hope you enjoy the posts.
