The First of July (34 page)
But still, I felt my heart beat fast; it was a life and it was London and I was used to Samuel Meyer’s sort of tone from the days when I was walking out with Connie. A cause seemed a good way to go forward and, who knows, in time, I might reach the masses by bicycle.
“As I was one of the lucky ones, I still say I was glad I was there.”
Lieutenant Corporal C. F. T. Townsend, 12th Middlesex Regiment, quoted by Martin Middlebrook in
The First Day of the Somme
“I have come to London to-day to take my life. I have never had a moment’s peace since July 1.”
Letter read at the inquest into the death of Lieutenant Colonel E. T. F. Sandys DSO, Commanding Officer, 2nd Middlesex Regiment, September 6, 1916
The first day of the Battle of the Somme, July 1, 1916, was the middle day of the year in the middle year of the Great War.
That day remains the worst military disaster to have befallen the British Army in terms of losses. The final returns showed 57,470 casualties, of whom 19,240 were killed, 35,493 wounded, 2,152 missing, and 585 taken prisoner.
The Somme campaign was finally brought to a close by bad weather after 143 days. By that time, there had been few territorial gains but over one million casualties on all sides.
Similar numbers of casualties were sustained by the French and German armies during the Battle of Verdun, which was fought in appalling conditions, from February to December of the same year.
My thanks, as ever, are
due to my agent Georgina Capel: guide, advocate, and tactician for many years. Writing any book begins in solitude and becomes a collaboration, and I have been enormously fortunate to have had the same team at Virago for all three of my novels; and I am delighted that
The First of July
will be published in the fortieth anniversary year of this remarkable imprint. I am very grateful for the continued support and sensitive editing of Victoria Pepe and the input of the wise Lennie Goodings. The invisibility of Celia Levett’s painstaking copy-editing is its triumph. This is the first of my novels to be published by Pegasus Books in the U.S., and their enthusiasm, which matched my own, and their meticulous work in preparing it for publication have made this a very happy experience.
Of the vast number of books about the Somme campaign, Martin Middlebrook’s
The First Day on the Somme
has been the one that I have returned to most often. By contrast, there are very few books in English about Verdun; but Alistair Horne’s
The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916
is a gem, still in print after forty years, that recreates the rich culture and the turbulent politics and mindset of pre-war France as well as the horrors of Verdun itself. Three other books were invaluable: Henri Barbusse’s 1916 novel
Le Feu
(
Under Fire
); Maurice Corina’s
Fine Silks and Oak Counters, Debenhams 1778–1978
; and Mary Schaller’s
Deliver Us from Evil: A Southern Belle in Europe at the Outbreak of World War I.
I first became interested in writing about synesthesia, as experienced by Benedict Chatto, when hearing a friend, Dr. Maria Scholfield, discuss it with Michael Berkeley on Radio 4’s
Private Passions
. Jamie Ward’s
The Frog Who Croaked Blue: Synaesthesia and the Mixing of the Senses
and John Harrison’s
Synaesthesia: The Strangest Thing
are fascinating accounts of the experience and scientific understanding of this condition. I am also extremely grateful to several individuals who responded to my requests on Twitter to provide vivid descriptions of living with synesthesia.
Elizabeth Speller
lived in Berlin, Rome, and Paris before reading Classics at Cambridge. She has written for publications as varied as the
Independent
,
Financial Times
,
Big Issue
, and
Vogue
and was a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Warwick. She divides her time between Gloucestershire and Greece.
Her debut novel was the bestselling
The Return of Captain John Emmett
, which was both an Orange New Writers pick and a Richard & Judy Summer Book Club selection. This was followed by
The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton
, which also featured Laurence Bartram.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright ©2013 by Elizabeth Speller
Interior design by Maria Fernandez
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