The FitzOsbornes at War (65 page)
Author Notes
T
HIS NOVEL IS A BLEND
of historical fact and imaginative fiction. Real people, groups and organisations mentioned include: Neville Chamberlain; Adolf Hitler; Joseph Stalin; Joachim von Ribbentrop; the League of Nations; the Women’s Voluntary Service (WVS); Air Raid Precautions (ARP); the Women’s Institute; the Royal Air Force (RAF); the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS); the Auxiliary Air Force (AAF); the Women’s Royal Naval Service, also known as the Wrens; the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF); the Air Transport Auxiliary; the Mechanised Transport Corps; the Red Cross; the Foreign Office; the Ministry of Food, headed by William Morrison and then Lord Woolton; the Kennedy family; Billy Hartington and the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire; the Duke and Duchess of Windsor; Unity and Deborah Mitford; Oswald and Diana Mosley; the British Union, the Right Club, the Nordic League, the Anglo-German Fellowship and The Link; Tyler Kent, Anna Wolkoff and Archibald Maule Ramsay; Oliver Cromwell; Winston Churchill and his daughters, Sarah, Diana and Mary; King George the Sixth and Princess Margaret; Clement Attlee; King Leopold of the Belgians; the Local Defence Volunteers (LDV), later known as the Home Guard; Lord Beaverbrook; Francisco Franco, the Falangists and the Guardia Civil; President Franklin D. Roosevelt; Sally Norton; Cecil Beaton; General de Gaulle, Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, the Grand Duchess of Luxembourg, Doctor Beneš of Czechoslovakia and General Sikorski of Poland; Rudolf Hess; Douglas Bader; Michael Creswell at the British Embassy in Madrid; Leslie Hore-Belisha; Samuel Hoare, the British Ambassador to Spain; the Ladies of Llangollen; Lady Astor; Charles White; Richard Hillary; General Eisenhower; Lea Rayner, head of the Air Ministry Pigeon Service; Mrs A. V. Alexander, wife of the First Lord of the Admiralty; John ‘Cat’s Eyes’ Cunningham; and Jacques Cousteau. Where real, historical people appear in the novel, I have used their biographies, their own writings and other evidence to try to make their actions and words as true to their known lives as possible. However, the FitzOsbornes, Stanley-Rosses, Bosworths, Elchesters, Blooms and other characters are figments of my imagination.
While Montmaray does not exist, most of the world events described in the novel actually occurred. These include: the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany; Germany’s invasion of Poland and the subsequent declaration of war by Britain; the evacuation of city children to the British countryside and to North America; the sinking of the SS
Athenia
; Britain’s internment of Enemy Aliens, including Jewish refugees from Germany; food, clothing and petrol rationing; the conscription of British men and women during the Second World War; the requisition of British property and businesses by the War Office; the ‘Phoney War’; the Soviet Union’s invasion of Finland; Germany’s invasion of Norway, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, France and the Channel Islands; the evacuation of Allied troops from Dunkirk; the spy scandal at the American Embassy in London; the imprisonment of Oswald and Diana Mosley; Italy’s declaration of war; the attempted kidnapping of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor by German agents; the British bombing of the French navy at Mers-el-Kébir; the Battle for Britain; the Blitz; the sinking of the
City of Benares
passenger liner while evacuating children to Canada; Hitler’s meeting with Franco at Hendaye; the Battle of Barking Creek; the People’s Convention; the North African and Middle East campaigns; Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union; Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor and the subsequent declaration of war by the United States; Japan’s invasion of China, Burma, Malaya, Hong Kong, Singapore, the Dutch East Indies and the Philippines; the interrogation of German prisoners of war at the ‘London Cage’ in Kensington Palace Gardens, and the imprisonment of captured German generals at Trent Park; the failed Dieppe raid; the Beveridge Report; the Katyn massacre; the death of General Sikorski; the Allied invasion of Normandy; the Belgian and French escape lines for Allied servicemen, and the imprisonment, torture and execution of French and Belgian Resistance workers by the Nazis; the U-boat campaign in the Atlantic; and the V-1 ‘flying bomb’ and V-2 rocket raids on England. The island of Montmaray, Montmaray House, Milford Park, the village of Milford and Astley Manor are fictional, but most of the other places mentioned in the novel are real.
Information about home life in England during the Second World War came from:
Wartime: Britain 1939–1945
by Juliet Gardiner;
Keep Smiling Through: The Home Front 1939–45
by Susan Briggs;
Voices from the Home Front: Personal Experiences of Wartime Britain 1939–45
by Felicity Goodall; and
The Home Front: The British and the Second World War
by Arthur Marwick.
Debs at War 1939–1945: How Wartime Changed Their Lives
by Anne de Courcy and
The Call of the Sea: Britain’s Maritime Past 1900–1960
by Steve Humphries contained helpful descriptions of women’s experiences during the war, while
Finest Years: Churchill as Warlord 1940–45
by Max Hastings and
Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, The End of Civilization
by Nicholson Baker provided useful political and military context. The story of Bamse came from
Sea Dog Bamse: World War II Canine Hero
by Angus Whitson and Andrew Orr.
Fighter Boys: Saving Britain 1940
by Patrick Bishop provided invaluable information about the experiences of fighter pilots in the RAF, as did
First Light
by Geoffrey Wellum
, The Last Enemy
by Richard Hillary and
Never Surrender: Lost Voices of a Generation at War
by Robert Kershaw. Most of the information about Toby’s escape from Belgium came from
The Freedom Line: The Brave Men and Women Who Rescued Allied Airmen from the Nazis During World War II
by Peter Eisner and
Wingless Victory: The Story of Sir Basil Embry’s Escape From Occupied France
by Anthony Richardson.
Information about Spain came from
Ambassador on Special Mission
by Samuel Hoare, Viscount Templewood,
They Shall Not Pass: The Spanish People at War 1936–39
by Richard Kisch and
Chief of Intelligence
by Ian Colvin, while
The Duchess of Windsor
by Michael Bloch and
King of Fools
by John Parker provided descriptions of the Nazi plan to abduct the Duke of Windsor. ‘Petticoat Diplomacy: The Admission of Women to the British Foreign Service, c.1919–1946’ by Helen McCarthy (
Twentieth Century British History
vol. 20 no. 3 (2009)) was an invaluable resource when writing about Veronica’s experiences at the Foreign Office.
Most of the information about the Kennedys and Billy Hartington came from
Kathleen Kennedy: The Untold Story of Jack’s Favourite Sister
by Lynne McTaggart and
Black Diamonds: The Rise and Fall of an English Dynasty
by Catherine Bailey. I also consulted John F. Kennedy’s
Why England Slept
and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy’s memoir,
Times to Remember
.
Stephen Dorril’s
Blackshirt: Sir Oswald Mosley & British Fascism
and Anne de Courcy’s
Diana Mosley
provided details of the Mosleys’ imprisonment and the activities of Fascists in Britain during the war.
Quotes from the following poems and novels were used:
Ode on a Grecian Urn
by John Keats
Jubilate Agno
by Christopher Smart
Pride and Prejudice
by Jane Austen
Toby also misquotes from
The Charge of the Light Brigade
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
The quote from
Picture Post
was cited in ‘Imperial War Museum’s Ministry of Food: Terry Charman Explores Food Rationing’ by Terry Charman,
Culture24
, 15 February, 2010. The quotes from
If the Invader Comes
, a booklet published by the British Government in 1940, were cited in Juliet Gardiner’s
Wartime: Britain 1939–1945
and the letter about
‘the old school tie’
was cited in Arthur Marwick’s
The Home Front: The British and the Second World War
.
There are also several quotes from, or references to, speeches by British politicians, which were delivered either in the House of Commons or as broadcasts on the BBC. These include
Chamberlain’s declaration of war
and his
‘Missed the bus’
and
Norway
speeches, as well as Churchill’s
‘Blood, toil, tears and sweat’,
‘We shall defend our island’,
‘Never in the field of human endeavour’
and
Soviet Union
speeches. Leo Amery delivered the
‘You have sat too long’ speech
in 1940. Churchill’s
‘let ’em starve’
comments about the Channel Islands were noted on the minutes of a Cabinet meeting in September, 1944, and his description of the Channel Islanders as
‘weak-livered . . . quislings’
came from a conversation with Lord Louis Mountbatten (both quotes are featured in the ‘Captive Islands’ exhibition in the Jersey War Tunnels).
T
HANK YOU TO:
Zoe Walton and Nancy Siscoe, for their patience, encouragement and invaluable editorial advice throughout the process of writing this series; the hard-working teams at Random House Australia and Random House Children’s Books (US); and Rick Raftos and Catherine Drayton.
About the Author
M
ICHELLE
C
OOPER IS THE AUTHOR
of
The Rage of Sheep
and the Montmaray Journals trilogy. The first Montmaray book,
A Brief History of Montmaray
, won a NSW Premier’s Literary Award and was listed in the American Library Association’s 2010 Best Books for Young Adults. Its sequel,
The FitzOsbornes in Exile
, was shortlisted for the NSW and WA Premier’s Literary Awards, named a Children’s Book Council of Australia Notable Book and listed in
Kirkus Reviews
’ Best Teen Books of 2011. Michelle lives in Sydney and is currently working on her next book for teenagers.
Visit
www.michellecooper-writer.com
for more information about Michelle and her books.
