10. KATE THOMPSON: Wartime Book Clubs, Banned Books, and Fighting Oppression in WWII

Y'all know I love a good World War II novel, so here's your next historical fiction read. Kate Thompson is taking us to German-occupied islands to share about the real people who held on to their intellectual freedom despite books being banned. Get ready to get off in the historical weeds with us!

SYNOPSIS OF "THE WARTIME LIBRARY"
    From enchanting cliff tops and white sandy bays to the pretty cobbled streets of St Helier, Jersey is known as the land of milk and honey. But for best friends Bea Rose, the local postwoman, and Grace Le Motte, who works in the island's only library, it becomes the frontline to everyday resistance when their beloved island is occupied by German forces in 1940.
    Inspired by astonishing true events, THE WARTIME BOOK CLUB is an unforgettable story of everyday bravery and resistance, full of romance, drama, and camaraderie and a tribute to the joy of reading and the power of books in our darkest hour.

FOLLOW KATE

BUY THE BOOKS (Bookshop):
The Little Wartime Library
The Wartime Book Club

BUY THE BOOKS (Amazon):
The Little Wartime Library
The Wartime Book Club

Transcript

00;00;01;20 - 00;00;21;11
Speaker 1
Welcome to the Literary Hype podcast. I Am Stephanie, the Literary Hype Woman. Today's author conversation comes from across the pond. I am talking with Kate Thompson, who is writing historical fiction. The first book you might recognize her for is the Little Wartime Library. It's not her first book, but it is the first one that kind of made a splash here in the U.S..

00;00;21;15 - 00;00;50;04
Speaker 1
Now she's putting out another bookish World War Two novel. So here's my conversation with Kate Thompson Welcome to Literary Hype. It is such an exciting day to get to have you on the show to talk about your new book. The War Time Book Club, and your previous book, A Little Wartime Library. So for anyone who hasn't seen the Wertheim Book Club pop up on their social media yet, I've heard about it from other readers.

00;00;50;10 - 00;00;52;05
Speaker 1
Give us a little intro to what this book is about.

00;00;52;08 - 00;01;09;15
Speaker 2
Oh, OK. Well, firstly, Stephanie, thank you so much for having me on. I know you were a massive support around the time of the release of the wartime library, and now here we are a year on. Where's that year gone? And we're talking about the wartime book club. So there was her book club is what I like to call a companion book to the wartime library.

00;01;09;15 - 00;01;36;29
Speaker 2
So it's not really a follow on, but it's another book set in a library in wartime. But unlike Beth Ann Greene, which was under was which was, you know, besieged by Nazi bombs in the Channel Island of Jersey, the Channel Islands were the only British territory to be occupied by the Germans during World War Two. So the librarians at Saint Halley, a library, didn't have to contend with Nazi bombs, but they did have to live under the heel of the Nazi jackboot.

00;01;37;13 - 00;02;06;27
Speaker 2
So really, essentially, it's about these incredible librarians working under Nazi censorship, fighting censorship, trying to do what they could to get books to beleaguered war weary islanders, setting up a book club, sneaking books to Jewish people in hiding and really understanding that in that awful time with all those Nazi censorship and rules and proclamations, that that really reading was like the lowest form of intellectual freedom.

00;02;06;27 - 00;02;24;03
Speaker 2
The Islanders still possessed. And that is essentially is about what the book is about, is about that love indulging, that escapism and that love of reading whilst living under this horrific sort of totalitarian regime. So it was something new for me really to to research this one.

00;02;24;08 - 00;02;27;07
Speaker 1
And this is based on a true story. So how did you come across it?

00;02;27;17 - 00;02;28;15
Speaker 3
Good. Good question.

00;02;28;16 - 00;02;54;11
Speaker 2
All my books really are based on untrue stories. And and like most of the stories that I find, I stumbled upon them really by chance. And it can often just be one line or, you know, something you've seen in a museum or a book, and it just lodges itself straight in your heart. So with a little time library obviously that came about through a very chance conversation with a 92 year old East ender, Pat Spicer, the sort of woman that you'd see on call, the midwife.

00;02;55;10 - 00;02;56;09
Speaker 3
Who told me about.

00;02;56;09 - 00;03;17;27
Speaker 2
This incredible underground library that she used during the Second World War. And in this case, with the wartime book club, I was in Jersey. I was over there for the Jersey Literary Festival of Words in 2019, and I went to this incredibly evocative underground well, it used to be a bunker during World War Two, and they've changed into a museum.

00;03;17;27 - 00;03;40;26
Speaker 2
And I was walking around this museum and it's dedicated to the occupation and what islanders faced and how they endured five years of living under occupation. And on the wall was this little tiny plaque, and it just said dedicated to the to the people who worked in Jersey post office who actually during the occupation we saw this scourge of poison pen letters.

00;03;40;26 - 00;04;04;03
Speaker 2
So perhaps driven by hunger or spite or fear some islanders informed on their neighbors. So they would write letters, anonymous letters, a sent to the German commandant saying search the property of you know, Mr. Dark Belmont terrorist. He's got a hidden wireless. And they sometimes they did it for money, but usually it was just a sense of spite.

00;04;04;03 - 00;04;24;07
Speaker 2
And quite often that was incredibly dangerous because the Gestapo or the secret police would turn up at that person's house, search their property. If they found a wireless, that person would face deportation to a prison or concentration camp in Germany. So what would happen is that when these letters came in to Jersey Post Office, the postal workers would steam the letters open.

00;04;24;25 - 00;04;48;06
Speaker 2
And then while they were cycling around the island on their on their rounds delivering letters, they would issue a warning like you have 24 hours to get rid of that wireless or whatever sort of infraction of German rule had taken place. The next day they would date stamp the letter and send it on to German high command. And in doing this, this very sort of quiet act of resistance, they saved hundreds of lives.

00;04;48;06 - 00;05;11;04
Speaker 2
So there was just this tiny little plaque in the museum wall. I thought, that's an incredible story. You know, I came completely obsessed by the notion of postmen and women, you know, instead of delivering the mail or not delivering the mail, and in doing so, saving lives And in tandem with that, I found out about the work that Jersey Library were doing, you know, delivering books to people in hiding.

00;05;11;04 - 00;05;34;23
Speaker 2
I go I became quite obsessed with this concept of quiet resistance, you know, what is it? You know, it wasn't like in France where they're blowing up bridges, and it was part of an organized network of resistance that wasn't possible. And in Jersey, the channel is tiny little island, and they were completely besieged by the enemy. There was sort of one German to every three islanders were in France.

00;05;34;23 - 00;05;55;23
Speaker 2
It was 11 civilian to every hundred German. So it was a very intense period. But I love the thought of an ordinary people behaving in extraordinary ways, like postal workers and librarians. And so that's what this book is, is this is a celebration of that. And it's a love letter in the way that the wartime library was to to librarians and to libraries.

00;05;55;29 - 00;06;04;19
Speaker 1
So this book is dedicated to a very special person. And you write about it a little bit at the beginning of the book, talk a little bit about your your hundred and six year old buddy.

00;06;05;10 - 00;06;08;00
Speaker 2
Oh, my lovely Beattie. Yes. Yeah.

00;06;08;01 - 00;06;09;02
Speaker 3
Beattie, Orwell.

00;06;09;17 - 00;06;33;28
Speaker 2
Is an amazing or was sadly an amazing woman. She was born on the fifth of the fifth 1917. And this was a woman I met when I was researching one of my previous books, the Stepney Doorstep Society, and Beattie was just incredible, you know, she joined the anti fascist party when she was 19 years old. She stood up at this event called the Battle of Cable Street to Fight the Rise of Fascism.

00;06;34;14 - 00;06;55;06
Speaker 2
And she was a very political figure in a time when it was very dangerous to be a Jewish woman living in the east end of London. So I always just was amazed by the, by the history that this woman had lived through. You know, it blew my mind to think I was sitting with a woman who had been alive during the First World War, and we became great friends, Betty and I.

00;06;55;06 - 00;07;13;17
Speaker 2
She always made me laugh. She had this big hooting laugh, and she was just this larger than life character. And she had worked as a policewoman during the Second World War as well as well as raising children and, you know, hiding from bombs and, you know, taking part in marches. She was this irreverence subversive woman. And I loved her dearly.

00;07;13;17 - 00;07;34;03
Speaker 2
And she died very sadly, just five days shy of her fifth birthday. I've been to 104th birthday party. We thought we were going to make 105. And it was whilst I was researching this book. So that's why I dedicated it to her, because she is a woman who lived a rich and remarkable life, and yet she's not really known.

00;07;34;03 - 00;07;36;23
Speaker 2
And yet she deserves to be like so many wartime women.

00;07;37;04 - 00;07;44;11
Speaker 1
Talk a little bit about your research process and how you find all these little details to include in the story.

00;07;46;06 - 00;07;57;03
Speaker 3
I love the way when you say it's a research process, it makes it sound like it's quite organized. It really is. And I think I just love what I love more.

00;07;57;03 - 00;08;19;15
Speaker 2
Than anything is sitting opposite somebody that lived through the war years and starting a conversation without knowing where it will lead. And quite often you sit there and you get that wonderful, unfiltered, like, gosh, of social history and you uncover these incredible stories. And and Joe's is particularly rich for that. You know, it's like an island simmering with stories.

00;08;19;15 - 00;08;41;29
Speaker 2
So I used to go when I went there, I had five research visits there, and I would rock up at this place called Age Concern. I'm sure you got a similar thing in America, and it's just a day club where people get together and play bingo or, you know, eat lunch and share stories. And I would just walk up there and sit with people and talk and you just hear the most incredible stories that way.

00;08;41;29 - 00;09;04;22
Speaker 2
You know, people would once memory is such an intriguing thing, isn't it? And I think once people get together and then you get that back and forth and the bantering and that rich, lively reminiscing, suddenly the past comes to life and people would be sharing things all the time. And so that's where I, I go to. That's like my first port of call, if you like, is to go to, you know, to clubs like that.

00;09;04;22 - 00;09;35;26
Speaker 2
But then obviously I go to archives and libraries and, and then go and do individual research. But that's my comfort place like that is where I'm absolutely happy just sitting listening to the unfiltered gosh in the back in the fourth and I get that very strong feeling, you know, that we're a stage of history where the need to share is overcoming the desire to forget I think a lot of women and men in their nineties remembering the war years feel the need or rather don't feel heard.

00;09;35;26 - 00;09;52;09
Speaker 2
I think that I don't know what it's like in America, but I do feel we have this sort of feeling of loneliness, particularly in our elderly generation, who feel that their memories and their contributions are often overlooked. You know, I interviewed this one wonderful woman called Eileen, and she said, You know what? She said, I might have snow on the roof, but I'm not old.

00;09;52;09 - 00;10;11;03
Speaker 2
I've still got stories to tell, and I love that. I thought, it's so true. So yeah, that's where I always, whilst we have the opportunity is what I'm saying, is to listen to these memories. I feel like we have a duty of care as a journalist and an adult and as an author to do that, to go directly to what historians call primary sources.

00;10;11;03 - 00;10;15;12
Speaker 2
But I just prefer to think of as just amazing, magnificent men and women.

00;10;16;00 - 00;10;29;29
Speaker 1
Talk a little bit about the state that we're in with so many of these people that lived through the war, didn't want to talk about it for so long. And now that they're dying off, now they want to talk about it and the importance of telling their stories while we still have the opportunity.

00;10;30;00 - 00;10;50;20
Speaker 2
Yeah, that's so true. It is so true. And I think for many years after the war, people just and you can understand this, you know, they suffered five long years of privation and danger and fear and drudgery. And, you know, then the war ended and the welfare state came into being and everybody wanted to look towards a sort of bright, shiny future.

00;10;50;20 - 00;11;08;15
Speaker 2
They wanted to forget about the past. And all those memories I tend to think of it is like the world packed up in a suitcase and put under the bed. But you never can really. You know, I get the sense that for many people that survived the war years, a lot of them are suffering from what we would call post-traumatic stress disorder.

00;11;08;25 - 00;11;27;11
Speaker 2
And if a lot of people having to process the most horrific things and never get an opportunity to sit down and share their stories and feel heard that that pain and that suffering, it doesn't fade, but it festers. And so all these years on, sort of eight years on from the end of the war, we're beginning to get that that need to share is just bubbling up.

00;11;27;11 - 00;11;46;14
Speaker 2
You can't it's like a sort of dam that you can't pat down. Eventually it's going to come out. And I feel that when I'm sitting with that generation, that bubbling out, that gush of of the need to share. And it's interesting because we're not and never is that more prevalent than in a place like Jersey, which because they lived with the enemy.

00;11;46;23 - 00;12;07;24
Speaker 2
Unfortunately, Ireland was stained for a few years after the war by allegations of collaboration they were in a very difficult position, the islanders. And so you heard these horrible terms that came up after the war. You know, women that had relationships with Germans were called Jerry Bags. And there were lots of accusations and some even from Winston Churchill, who said that they collaborated.

00;12;08;09 - 00;12;33;06
Speaker 2
And what I definitely found with my research is this absolute sort of paranoia at the way that they are perceived and treated. And so shame and the stigma and the persecution still swirls around that island. It resounds in many quarters of the island. But I definitely felt that they have been unfairly treated and that actually there were many a great many acts of quiet resistance.

00;12;33;06 - 00;12;52;15
Speaker 2
I call the war unorganized resistance from islanders, a lot of whom were just working class women doing what they could to strike back against the regime. And they've never really been acknowledged like the librarians that used to supply books to people in hiding, like the post office that destroyed informers letters. Those acts of resistance have gone on documented.

00;12;52;15 - 00;13;18;01
Speaker 2
And I think it's time in history that we take stock and we celebrate and we look afresh at history. You know, and I this is a novel. I it's not I'm not attempting to write a nonfiction revisionist history, but I think all good historical fiction addresses those things and tries to acknowledge social history and the suffering and, you know, the contribution that men and women made to the sort of social, the economic, the political history of the areas.

00;13;18;01 - 00;13;22;04
Speaker 2
So that's what I try and shoehorn those messages in with the story.

00;13;22;28 - 00;13;42;11
Speaker 1
And in writing about war, you're writing about a lot of really horrific moments in history. How do you put yourself in those moments to describe because you describe them dramatically and very well, but putting yourself in that moment to bring the horror of those situations to life.

00;13;42;21 - 00;14;06;12
Speaker 2
That's a really good question. And I think there's a really simple, straightforward answer to that. I think as writers and readers and book lovers, particularly those who have read from a very young age, I feel like we all have a heightened sense of empathy. I think it's our job as as journalists and authors to put ourselves in the shoes of others and or rather get under the skin of it.

00;14;06;12 - 00;14;34;07
Speaker 2
And the only way you can do that is with meticulous research. You know, read all the sources, read around it. But I also think then then comes that extra layer of empathy that you need in order to understand what it's like to be sitting in an underground shelter separate from your children and your husband, not knowing if your house is still standing, that you know and understand the emotions that women lived through and what they what they saw and what they smell and what they fell and what they heard I think it's just a learning curve as you get older.

00;14;34;07 - 00;14;58;09
Speaker 2
I think your sense of certainly I felt this, but as I age, my sense of empathy becomes more acute. I think we all I don't think I could have written these books in my twenties or my thirties. That's not to say everybody calm, but it's only now now I'm, you know, turning 50 this year that I do begin to feel I have a heightened sense of empathy that enables me to write with more authenticity or more conviction.

00;14;58;09 - 00;15;20;16
Speaker 2
And, and, and one of the things I read, and I appreciate this as a reader, is that when you're reading a book, you want to be swept away. You want to feel what those characters feel. You want to see what they're saying. You want to be on the street walking beside them. And I think that's our job as novelists is to pick people up and put them in that street, in that position next to them so that they're the it's all enveloping.

00;15;20;29 - 00;15;26;20
Speaker 1
Do you have any kind of rituals or anything that puts you in the mindset of the 1940s while you're getting ready to write?

00;15;26;21 - 00;15;30;17
Speaker 2
So that's a really good question as well. Like when I interviewed Madeleine Martin.

00;15;31;09 - 00;15;32;05
Speaker 3
So I do a podcast.

00;15;32;08 - 00;15;34;13
Speaker 2
Called From the Library With Love, and I.

00;15;34;13 - 00;15;35;23
Speaker 3
Asked I ask other.

00;15;35;23 - 00;15;52;05
Speaker 2
Authors that question. And when I was talking to Madeleine Martin, who wrote obviously the wonderful, many wonderful books, but favorite of mine is that it's the last bookshop in London and she listens to she used to listen to air raid sirens going when she was writing and it got her in that moment. And I can relate to that.

00;15;52;05 - 00;16;08;06
Speaker 2
I definitely feel that that kind of gets you in the zone of it. For me. I like to write in the afternoons. I just feel like it's where my you know, the morning social media and catching up with emails and stuff. And in the afternoon, my brain, it's like, you know, let me shake a snow globe and then everything settles down.

00;16;08;06 - 00;16;28;06
Speaker 2
That's how I feel. Come afternoon, I can just get into it. I get myself a strong coffee. I just try and absorb myself and forget about everything. And music helps for sure. But really, it's just it's. I don't think there's any magic bullet. I think you just have to sit your bum down and write words and keep them right words every single day.

00;16;28;09 - 00;16;38;19
Speaker 1
When you're writing historical fiction, you've got to kind of cherry pick what you stay true to and what you kind of fudge a little bit. Yeah. You approach making those decisions.

00;16;38;22 - 00;17;00;04
Speaker 2
I try to go on the basis of less is more that sometimes you might spend all afternoon in an archive, but but a light hand in the application of those historical facts, a sprinkling instead of a deluge is sometimes best. And I'll give you an example of how I've come to that conclusion. I read a review for a book that I'd written previously.

00;17;00;04 - 00;17;05;13
Speaker 2
And and in the review somebody said, Kate Thompson has really done a research. And I thought, Oh, that's good, you know.

00;17;05;18 - 00;17;06;16
Speaker 3
Well, and then she did it.

00;17;06;16 - 00;17;07;26
Speaker 2
Doesn't she want us to know it?

00;17;09;04 - 00;17;17;12
Speaker 3
Was like, Ouch, I did. You know, as painful as that is, I do think we can learn something from a bad review. I think we can learn more from a bad review than a good one.

00;17;17;27 - 00;17;43;08
Speaker 2
And so I've tried to try to apply that. And when I'm reading books, I appreciate a really concise, fascinating nugget of history that I've never heard before, just just weaved in effortlessly into the narrative rather than an information dump of lots and lots of facts and figures and statistics so I think one well chosen, a well crafted historical fact can have more impact.

00;17;43;16 - 00;17;59;28
Speaker 1
You start each of these chapters with a book that was banned by the Germans and their explanation talk about digging all that information out. And if there was any one reason that surprised you more, or a book that was most surprising that it was on their list.

00;17;59;28 - 00;18;02;09
Speaker 2
And I love a good chapter heading.

00;18;02;09 - 00;18;09;10
Speaker 3
I've got to say, anyone who's read the wartime library might realize that because I in the wartime library, I used real.

00;18;09;10 - 00;18;27;06
Speaker 2
Quotes, so I interviewed 100 librarians to celebrate a hundred years of green my library. And some of those quotes were so good. And I just thought that's why I put them on the front of each chapter and the feedback from readers. Everybody seemed to really like that. It added a little something extra. So I thought, OK, I'll, I'll do that with the wartime book club.

00;18;27;06 - 00;18;45;22
Speaker 2
And initially I actually put on the top of each chapter a real man or woman who had died at the hands of Nazi in Nazi persecution. But reading it back, it was too complicated to digest. It was worthy, but it didn't work in that place. So I actually ended up putting all those at the back of the book.

00;18;46;02 - 00;19;04;19
Speaker 2
And then it was only when I was reading for research and I didn't haven't realized about that. I found this amazing book on eBay about books that the Nazis banned. They banned books, and it was just literally that a whole list of the of the titles that the Nazis felt were uncongenial to the regime. And there was some real shockers in there.

00;19;04;27 - 00;19;25;08
Speaker 2
I mean, obviously, you'd expect Jewish authors you know, communists, anybody who spoke out about the regime. But there was also a book in there. Bambi had been banned because obviously was a Jewish author. But it Bambi's got its roots in a much darker story about anti-Semitism and persecution. And I was just I was blown away by that. I never expected that book to be banned.

00;19;25;25 - 00;19;49;01
Speaker 2
So and the more I realized, yeah, I thought there's loads out there, actually. So it felt quite timely to put one on the top of each of each chapter. So I'd be really interested to hear what we had to say about that, how how they found it and and I think it tells a bigger story about the Third Reich and their weird ideology, because there was a great story, actually, as a token, who writes Lord of the Rings, he had been approached.

00;19;49;01 - 00;20;14;13
Speaker 2
His book came out just prior to I think it was in the late 1930s, and he was approached by a German publisher who wanted to publish a German translation of Lord of the Rings, but only if he could provide a letter proving his Aryan credentials, which was amazing. And he wrote this absolutely stunning ritual. He wrote back and said, It's of no business of yours, what my Aryan credentials are.

00;20;14;13 - 00;20;17;07
Speaker 2
And Hitler, Hitler is a ruddy little ignoramus.

00;20;18;03 - 00;20;26;18
Speaker 3
I just thought that such a great ritual. So it was that wasn't actually technically banned, but because it never made it into German, I thought it was too good not to put on there.

00;20;27;10 - 00;20;35;11
Speaker 1
You've written a few books in the World War Two era. What is it about that time period that you love so much and has you just keep coming back for it?

00;20;35;19 - 00;20;58;06
Speaker 2
There's something about World War Two that's within our grasp, isn't it? It's recent history. There are still people around that can remember it. Everybody feels connected to some degree to World War Two. Because we've got, you know, grandparents, hopefully some still alive, if we're lucky. That fought there. So and I think it's something captivating about that time. And putting ourselves in that position of thinking, what would we have done?

00;20;58;15 - 00;21;18;06
Speaker 2
How would we have behaved, what might we have done in that scenario? So I've always been fascinated by it. And I think there are just so many stories out there. I mean, when I first started writing World War Two Fiction in 2016, there were were certain in England they were World War to historical fiction, but nothing like on the scale we see it now.

00;21;18;06 - 00;21;41;17
Speaker 2
I mean it's, you know, it's absolutely boomed hasn't it? And yet for all the fact that every week seems a new release of a historical fiction, there are still millions of stories are untold stories out there. And that's where I work from the starting point of what's the true story, how can I fictionalize it, what can I bring, what's, what's new or surprising about the past.

00;21;41;27 - 00;21;49;10
Speaker 2
And there are always surprises in history. I've got a list of books waiting to be written of untold stories that I you know, there's just not enough time.

00;21;49;10 - 00;21;50;03
Speaker 3
To write them all.

00;21;51;05 - 00;22;04;09
Speaker 1
The war time library is already out in the UK where you are. And it's about as of the time of this recording, it's not quite out yet in the U.S. What's it like for you balancing these two different release dates for the same book?

00;22;04;17 - 00;22;22;25
Speaker 2
Well, it's not just that either, because then it comes out in Australia and New Zealand on a different date and then of course then there are staggered releases because then it comes out in Spain and Italy and France and Germany. And so then you I don't really feel like I have one set release date. It's just all year round now.

00;22;23;04 - 00;22;38;19
Speaker 2
Which is great actually, you know, because a book doesn't have a start and an end point. There's no defining moment when a book, you know, goes on sale and off sale as far as I'm concerned. It's just always out in the world. So I'm always getting emails from people like, you know, I had a book club in Brazil the other day.

00;22;38;19 - 00;22;52;17
Speaker 2
I did a zoom with a book club in Girona in Spain. And I love that. I love that book is a living, breathing thing going out into the world. And so I just don't see it as this is the day that this starts and ends is just ever present.

00;22;53;00 - 00;22;56;13
Speaker 1
Are there any challenges you faced in putting your books out in multiple countries.

00;22;56;15 - 00;23;14;02
Speaker 2
Keeping up with correspondence? I would say I get a lot of emails, particularly if the wartime libraries seem to strike a chord. I think and I was thinking about this like, why is the first of my books that have been translated abroad? Usually my previous books have just been in England and suddenly now this went into all these different territories.

00;23;14;14 - 00;23;33;10
Speaker 2
And I just think it's because we all there is a universal love of books and reading and literature. We, you know, just wonder what language we speak we all love the library. There are libraries in every country in the world, most countries in the world, you know, they're the most civilized hallmark of a democracy having a library. And I think that struck a chord in people.

00;23;33;10 - 00;23;47;29
Speaker 2
And so, you know, it's not a job, is it? My God, I'm lucky to sit in and share these amazing stories and talk to people like yourself. About them. It's just that's a joy. I have nothing to moan about. So, yeah, juggling hard. But then who what woman isn't juggling?

00;23;49;02 - 00;23;50;09
Speaker 1
Ain't that the truth?

00;23;51;25 - 00;23;55;01
Speaker 3
That was said with feeling the love.

00;23;55;13 - 00;24;18;04
Speaker 1
So you have this line in there in your book, but it stood out to me just because of that kind of dark romance. Right now here in the US, forbidden love seems desirable at 17, but it rarely ends well. Can I just talk about the rise of forbidden love and it be well, interesting, right?

00;24;18;05 - 00;24;20;07
Speaker 3
No. Well, isn't it isn't it?

00;24;20;07 - 00;24;37;25
Speaker 2
I mean, so many things are the policy relevant. And I think that's the that's why I love writing about history, you know, historical fiction or about the past, because actually you begin to realize that there is nothing new. Everything just comes around. We don't as humans, we don't learn anything from the past. We just often condemned to repeat the mistakes of the past.

00;24;37;25 - 00;25;05;20
Speaker 2
So yeah, I mean, I was talking there obviously about a relationship between a German and a young Jersey woman, and that was a very forbidden, stigmatized relationship. But I tried to put myself in the shoes of a 17 year old girl in Jersey. You know, you there your lives controlled by rationing and blackouts and the cinema hours are closed and the dances are closed and the beaches are, you know, all off limits and covered in barbed wire.

00;25;05;20 - 00;25;21;24
Speaker 2
What have you got to do? You know, I remember what it was like to be 17. I just wanted to be going out having fun, and then suddenly this young, strapping man comes along and whisk off your feet. So, you know, I think there were a lot of young women who thought that they were, in inverted commas, in love but they were just doing what young women have always done in history.

00;25;22;15 - 00;25;30;19
Speaker 2
So that was that was the forbidden love. And clearly in that scenario, it didn't. With no spoilers, you'd have to read the book. It didn't end particularly well.

00;25;31;11 - 00;25;33;02
Speaker 3
But that's what I meant by that, I think.

00;25;33;08 - 00;25;57;11
Speaker 2
And it's so, you know, that it is fascinating the way that women were treated in the in the aftermath of the war years, especially, I think in areas that have lived through an occupation, they tend to inject poison into the area, into those places that have withstood occupation because when I was going back to the island, you know, what was it, sort of 75, nearly eight years on, women are still getting killed.

00;25;57;11 - 00;26;22;09
Speaker 2
Gerry Banks. And in fact, I was told this fascinating story by a tour guide who said that there was a woman who went very elderly woman who was sent to a to live in a care home. And when she walked into the communal lounge, everybody in the lounge deliberately turned their back on her. And it's because she was a Jerry bag, no matter that that was 80 years ago you know memories are long and she was still an outcast all these years on.

00;26;22;20 - 00;26;44;10
Speaker 2
And it shows how toxic and poisonous those wartime relationships were and that that sort of moral cock mire that people were living in. And if you go around Jersey today, you know you can still see very faintly on buildings and walls the outline of a tower swastika that was painted on the walls and the doors of anybody accused of collaboration with the Germans.

00;26;44;22 - 00;26;55;12
Speaker 2
And they've been washed over, but you can still see them faintly underneath and I love that as a sort of metaphor for the history is always there lurking. You can't completely whitewash it.

00;26;56;01 - 00;27;03;02
Speaker 1
And you've mentioned a few times that you are a journalist. What does you learn from your journalism career that has helped you write fiction?

00;27;03;23 - 00;27;26;12
Speaker 2
Well, well, that's such a good question. Um, so the biggest thing I think I learned from being a journalist is my old adage just said to me when I first started out, she said, If there's a silence, don't fill it she was like, Just sit with the silence and you'll be amazed at what you hear. And I have tried to follow that through, and I think there's some truth in that.

00;27;26;26 - 00;27;55;09
Speaker 2
I think when you go out and interview people quite often, it's only at the end of the interview, this fascinating little nugget will slip out and someone will say, Oh, I didn't know where that came from. So that that's really helped. And I think also just about questioning and challenging the past, I think in terms of research, it helps you to open more doors and to be more questioning about sources and go to multiple sources and cross-check and, you know, and just go and knock on people's doors and ask for interviews.

00;27;55;09 - 00;28;12;18
Speaker 2
I think that really has given me that skill that, you know, as a young journalist in my twenties training, I was always out on my patch, as it was called. But then door knocking, you know, you were expected to turn up a stranger's door, which quite often they might have undergone the most horrific, turbulent thing in their life.

00;28;12;18 - 00;28;36;08
Speaker 2
And you have to turn up at the door and ask them to share their story with you. That's not easy to do. And I just did that all the time in my twenties and thirties, and I think it helped me to understand how to to to talk well, actually how to listen. Not about talking, it's about sitting and listening, active listening as well, you know, trying to read the subtext and the story behind the story.

00;28;36;15 - 00;28;39;19
Speaker 2
Would you say, I mean, you were a journalist. Would you agree with that?

00;28;40;07 - 00;28;46;11
Speaker 1
Oh, absolutely. Like you find people at the lowest point in their life. Yeah.

00;28;46;12 - 00;28;46;28
Speaker 2
Yeah.

00;28;47;24 - 00;28;55;00
Speaker 1
You have to try to get them to talk about it, even though that's something they don't want to talk about it. And it is you kind of feel guilty about it, too.

00;28;55;02 - 00;28;56;18
Speaker 2
Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

00;28;56;29 - 00;29;02;27
Speaker 1
I'm just doing my job and I know this sucks, but I need you to do this and the world needs you to tell your side.

00;29;03;17 - 00;29;20;06
Speaker 2
Yeah, it's really hard. It's where you learn a myriad of skills without even realizing it. Think about how to empathize and how to get people to trust you as well. I mean, that's a huge thing. You know, and and now journalists have got a bad name in well, in some courses. So I think that that adds to the challenge of it.

00;29;20;06 - 00;29;27;20
Speaker 2
But there's, you know, there's still a place for good, robust you know, investigative journalism now more than ever. I'd say that's.

00;29;27;20 - 00;29;44;15
Speaker 1
Part of why I got out of news. It was just getting so and yeah, what we made it a week we had a photographer get a gun pulled on and we had another photographer get a hold of it. And they drove around the building all night while I was inside. And since like, wow.

00;29;44;20 - 00;29;50;18
Speaker 2
Wow. That's so interesting you say that. Do you feel like I feel like could be turning the tables?

00;29;51;03 - 00;29;52;11
Speaker 3
No, I'm asking you, this is.

00;29;52;11 - 00;29;53;13
Speaker 1
Only a matter of time.

00;29;54;13 - 00;30;00;20
Speaker 3
Yeah. I'm amazed I lasted this long, but I interviewed the other day for for my.

00;30;00;20 - 00;30;22;01
Speaker 2
Podcast, this group of women. Oh, no. We're not just women as well. Librarians in America called the Secret Society of Librarians, and they remain anonymous. And you should check them out. They're really interesting, and they when I interviewed them that anonymously, they were saying how they're just scared to go to work. They're scared to do their job. They get guns pulled on them outside libraries.

00;30;22;01 - 00;30;39;14
Speaker 2
And because of the rise in censorship and the anger and the volatility, they're really frightened to do their jobs, which I found you saying that about being a journalist really reminded me of that and about that rise of censorship, which again harks back to what we're talking about with with World War Two. We're just seeing, you know, nothing is new.

00;30;39;14 - 00;30;41;21
Speaker 2
We're just seeing the same things rising up again.

00;30;41;25 - 00;30;47;07
Speaker 1
It's a little creepy how it's similar to these historical stories.

00;30;47;29 - 00;31;11;25
Speaker 2
Yeah. Yeah. And so for me, it feels quite zeitgeist in a way. To be talking about the censorship of books whilst, you know and, you know, you talk about you immerse yourself in the past and you see you're oblivious to current affairs and then, you know, be writing about this Nazi censorship. And then I'd go downstairs and look at my phone and somebody would be on Facebook talking about how the library had banned, you know, and the Diary of Anne Frank for example.

00;31;11;25 - 00;31;24;08
Speaker 2
So it does feel like those themes, you know, that that anger, that that feeling of loss of control it's kind of raising its head again all these years on.

00;31;25;01 - 00;31;32;28
Speaker 1
So you mentioned your podcast, The Library with Love. How did you go about getting started with that? What made you want to serve the podcast?

00;31;33;01 - 00;31;33;23
Speaker 3
Well, yeah.

00;31;33;23 - 00;31;52;26
Speaker 2
So from that, I really love is is a history lovers podcast, is a is a podcast for people that love books as well. It came about because I was interviewing as part of my research, this incredible woman called Betty Webb, who is 100 years old, and she worked as a code breaker at Bletchley Park. And she is incredible.

00;31;52;26 - 00;32;10;19
Speaker 2
And I sat down opposite her recording her interview, and she had this really unique voice, like you don't hear voices like that anymore. You know, she wouldn't have been at a place in a Mary Poppins film, that particularly unique way of speaking. And, you know, it's great to be able to share her story in a book or in a magazine article.

00;32;10;19 - 00;32;28;00
Speaker 2
Or a newspaper. But I wanted people to hear her voice. And so then I Sunny occurred to me, like, I've recorded this interview. Why don't I think about releasing it as a as a podcast? And well, that's easier said than done, isn't it? It took me a while, you know, to really work out. And I'm still you know, I'm still just fumbling my way through it, really.

00;32;28;00 - 00;32;50;29
Speaker 2
But so yeah, I mean, to set up the name from the library with love and then to, you know, find a provider, a host, you know, a host for it and to work out how to do it and schedule them. And, you know, it's a whole, whole skill set of which I knew nothing about other than the fact that I just had this passionate belief that these are stories that need to be told and need to be heard.

00;32;51;18 - 00;33;09;12
Speaker 2
So what you'll find is a mix of authors sharing their stories like I Am with you, and also our wartime generation sharing their stories so and I try to coincide things. So like I have an amazing interview coming up with this guy called Mervyn Kerr. She's 100 years old, and he was one of the first men on the beaches at D-Day.

00;33;09;26 - 00;33;32;29
Speaker 2
And telling his unique story and was there at the liberation of Bergen-Belsen. I mean, just incredible stories and so amazing to get his voice down and for people to go to click that link and hear somebody from from that generation share in their stories. Because in five years time, I won't be able to do that. You know, there will be no more room or time left for lively reminiscing.

00;33;32;29 - 00;33;49;24
Speaker 2
So I've got this very urgent sense of the need to capture those stories well, whilst we still can. I mean, next week, I'm going out to interview a hundred year old woman called Ruth, who I met that worked as a Y as a wife says she was picked up a spanner she said that, you know, I.

00;33;49;24 - 00;33;50;03
Speaker 3
Could have.

00;33;50;23 - 00;34;13;18
Speaker 2
I could have done anything in World War Two, but I really wanted to be a mechanic. And it gave me the opportunity. And so I joined the RAF and worked as an aircraft engineer. So I'm really looking forward to interviewing her and sharing her story. So yeah, it's out there now. And all the usual providers, Spotify, Apple, but it's called From the Library with Love and I figured that, you know, it's about stories from writers.

00;34;13;18 - 00;34;22;01
Speaker 2
It's about stories from people that have books written about them. The library is a sort of repository of those stories so that's why I called it that. And it's my love of libraries.

00;34;22;27 - 00;34;25;19
Speaker 1
Very excited about that. Bergen-Belsen liberated.

00;34;26;02 - 00;34;44;20
Speaker 2
I know. I mean, he told I mean, he tells an amazing story about how there was a camp that had been liberated and his commanding officer asked for volunteers to go in and help because they couldn't force anybody because there was a typhus epidemic. So you could only go if you were if you want if you wanted to volunteer.

00;34;44;20 - 00;35;03;09
Speaker 2
And being Jewish, he didn't hesitate and he went straight in to help. And he said that in those early days, it was such a major catastrophe and humanitarian disaster that nobody really in the early days, it was just unimaginable sighs. But he he started to gather up all his rations of chocolate and he would give them to survivors.

00;35;03;20 - 00;35;20;22
Speaker 2
And he said only years later that I realized that was totally the wrong thing. To do because it was way too rich for their bodies. And obviously, a lot of people died after liberation from, you know, from various different things. But but overfeeding was one of the things. So he told that story, and he was really still gripped with shame about the whole thing.

00;35;20;22 - 00;35;27;07
Speaker 2
So just a fascinating man. An extraordinary man. So I'm so can't wait to share that story.

00;35;27;20 - 00;35;29;25
Speaker 1
Have you been to Bergen-Belsen modern day?

00;35;30;13 - 00;35;33;02
Speaker 2
Well, funny you should say that. I'm actually going next month.

00;35;33;25 - 00;35;40;29
Speaker 3
I'm told. Have you mean to say that? You know, I know it, but but yeah, I can see it. You are. So there's obviously a.

00;35;40;29 - 00;35;45;01
Speaker 2
Reason for that, isn't there? Is it connecting you to the farce? I'm writing the.

00;35;45;01 - 00;35;57;01
Speaker 1
Buildings aren't there anymore. So they go iPad that with like geo locator. So you hold the iPad up and it shows you where the buildings have been like. So it's like an overlay and it's so cool.

00;35;57;19 - 00;36;25;18
Speaker 2
That's changing. So yeah, lot in January I was in Auschwitz, Birkenau in Poland. I'm actually working with a Holocaust survivor at the moment. To tell her story, and I'm retracing her footsteps, if you like, the journey into hell, really, that she took. And so in January, I went to the ghetto and to Ashes Birkenau. And then in May I'm going to Dachau Subcamp account and to Bergen-Belsen.

00;36;25;18 - 00;36;44;29
Speaker 2
So I'll make sure to try and get that because because Renee's mother is this is the lady whose book I'm writing. Her mother was very sadly one of the many thousands of people that didn't make it and died after liberation and is buried at Bergen-Belsen. And she she managed to erect a small headstone to her there. It was a mass grave.

00;36;44;29 - 00;36;50;23
Speaker 2
So I'll be going there trying to find her grave and look around. So when did you go then? Was was that recent.

00;36;51;06 - 00;36;52;19
Speaker 1
Five, six years ago?

00;36;52;23 - 00;36;53;27
Speaker 2
OK, OK.

00;36;53;27 - 00;37;02;07
Speaker 1
Yeah, it's called Rios Radio in American Sector. So it's a fellowship that takes American journalists to Germany and German American journalists to America.

00;37;02;07 - 00;37;03;29
Speaker 2
And what an opportunity.

00;37;04;12 - 00;37;20;26
Speaker 1
And that was part of my research week where I was off on my own because I was in Kansas City at the time. And we had a woman who had survived Birkenau Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. And so she operated from Bergen-Belsen, but shot in the process and said that.

00;37;21;04 - 00;37;22;01
Speaker 2
No way.

00;37;22;07 - 00;37;28;29
Speaker 1
Oh, I've still kick and they just may be dying. Sonia, Sonia, a movie called Big Sonia, that's all about her.

00;37;29;01 - 00;37;30;11
Speaker 2
Is she still alive, this one?

00;37;30;11 - 00;37;41;23
Speaker 1
Yeah, she's alive. He just retired. She was a seamstress and just retired within the last year or so because and only because they were kicking her out of the building where she'd been doing.

00;37;41;24 - 00;37;44;09
Speaker 2
What they made of tough stuff. These survivors.

00;37;44;09 - 00;37;52;02
Speaker 1
Yeah. So she's sure she would have still been working if they hadn't booted her out of her building. But everybody big zanies in town.

00;37;52;15 - 00;38;00;11
Speaker 2
Do you know where she was before Auschwitz? Because she must have followed a similar route to Renee, who was in the ghetto, then went to Auschwitz.

00;38;00;26 - 00;38;03;06
Speaker 1
Then went to not 100% sure.

00;38;03;17 - 00;38;05;03
Speaker 2
I'll have to look her up, though. That's really.

00;38;05;14 - 00;38;23;18
Speaker 1
Yeah. So I went I went to Auschwitz and Birkenau first, then the dealership, and then that was my research week was Bergen-Belsen. And then I was also doing stuff on Martin Luther because it was the 500th anniversary of the 95 thesis. So I did a couple of stories and.

00;38;23;21 - 00;38;24;27
Speaker 2
Yeah, that's, that's a lot.

00;38;25;18 - 00;38;26;01
Speaker 3
Of things, a.

00;38;26;01 - 00;38;45;28
Speaker 2
Lot writing about, about the Holocaust is over that, you know, entry into that as well. But did you, I there's no words to describe ashtrays is there? Once you've been inside the, you know, the gas chambers and you've walked around Birkenau and the scale of it and, and then and the knowledge that you're walking on Jewish graves, it's just it's overwhelming.

00;38;45;29 - 00;38;48;25
Speaker 2
There's no way for the for the mind to process it is there it's.

00;38;48;25 - 00;38;56;23
Speaker 1
So intense especially like Bergen-Belsen has like a museum as well. And it's like the piles of shoes and the piles of glasses and it's just the.

00;38;57;14 - 00;38;57;23
Speaker 2
On the.

00;38;57;23 - 00;39;07;29
Speaker 1
Heavens. Yes. Like all of that, seeing all of that and walking around, it's very heavy. So it was like, did you do anything fun in Europe? And I was like.

00;39;08;10 - 00;39;27;19
Speaker 2
Not really hard when you because when you come out of those places, you just you need to lie down and just process and just try and understand your mind grapples with what it's saying. And there's always this it was funny. There's always something, isn't there just one thing that tends to jump. For me, it was seeing the display cases of hair.

00;39;27;19 - 00;39;43;11
Speaker 2
And I remember going into this one thing, I remember back and seeing all the hair behind glass and I'm thinking, Oh, wow. And it really drew me up short. But then realizing that the glass display cabinet went all around this massive room and I was just like my eyes were going around the room just thinking Oh my God, it's everywhere.

00;39;44;02 - 00;40;07;03
Speaker 2
And I think it was like something like seven tons of human hair made its way out of Auschwitz. And and the sheer cynicism of it, the fact that they used to recycle it into bombs and mattresses and even socks for submariners, it's just, you know, that was what really lodged in my mind. I think that as part of that dehumanization that they could do that, recycle Jews into the Third Reich.

00;40;07;03 - 00;40;08;00
Speaker 3
It's just. Oh.

00;40;08;21 - 00;40;14;23
Speaker 1
So you mentioned that you were working on a very special book. Do you want to tell us a little bit about what's up next for you?

00;40;14;28 - 00;40;17;12
Speaker 3
That is the book I'm working on the the.

00;40;17;12 - 00;40;19;19
Speaker 2
Holocaust nonfiction.

00;40;20;05 - 00;40;20;18
Speaker 1
Book.

00;40;21;26 - 00;40;40;03
Speaker 2
I can't say too much about that because I haven't had the all clear yet for my publisher to really talk about that. But that's that's very intense. That has to be finished by I've got quite a tight deadline on that. And then after that, I'm going to get back to fiction. I think I feel after the intensity of that, that I will quite gladly go back to fiction.

00;40;40;03 - 00;41;05;03
Speaker 2
So I've got a few ideas bubbling under about what I'd like to do, but one of which we I talked earlier about the secret society of librarians who have banded together in sort of solidarity to fight censorship. And that really sparked something in me that that notion of women, of librarians coming together. And so I think I'm working on an idea that circles around the secret society of librarians.

00;41;05;22 - 00;41;10;08
Speaker 2
So maybe you and I will be talking in a year or so or two years about that.

00;41;10;20 - 00;41;13;22
Speaker 1
Do you feel like you approach fiction differently than you approach nonfiction?

00;41;13;23 - 00;41;15;11
Speaker 3
Oh, for sure. Yeah, yeah.

00;41;15;11 - 00;41;45;16
Speaker 2
Yeah, definitely. I mean, it's hard, actually, because when now I'm writing nonfiction you almost, like, have to take off the fiction hat and put on the nonfiction hat because there are certain descriptions and that I would like to use, but I know I can't because they might not be accurate or appropriate or authentic. So I try to rein back my my prose, I suppose, and keep it.

00;41;45;21 - 00;42;07;09
Speaker 2
And it has to be more factual. It has to be. And you have to just write it completely differently so it can take a little while to get out of one zone and into the next. But I kind of missing the creativity of the creative writing, having a bit more freedom to express yourself and write sort of let yourself off the lead a bit and really go for it with with fiction.

00;42;08;07 - 00;42;31;02
Speaker 2
Whereas you having to be much more constrained and concise and accurate in nonfiction so yeah, they're very different disciplines and I think it's really good to actually be able to go from one to the other because I think they feedback and they're complimentary. I think the more research you do for nonfiction plays into how you approach fiction and your empathy and the prose and the writing style of that can play back into nonfiction.

00;42;31;02 - 00;42;43;13
Speaker 2
So once you do approach them very different and they're fundamentally very different disciplines, I think they both enable you to to use strengths and talents that play into the other if that makes sense.

00;42;43;19 - 00;42;59;09
Speaker 1
I think it does. It's like I've tried to write fiction, but I like for journalism, you're like, no adjectives, no adjectives, no adjectives, because that's putting things yes. Voice, yes. Be true to them. And so trying to write fiction, you have to use adjectives. And then it's like, Yeah.

00;43;00;10 - 00;43;10;06
Speaker 3
Yeah, I don't like this. Whereas I love an adjective chunk of it. I can very happily sit with adjectives all day long is that the.

00;43;10;06 - 00;43;13;08
Speaker 2
Challenge is to not use them too much in nonfiction.

00;43;14;03 - 00;43;21;29
Speaker 1
So I can't describe things too much because then that's putting, putting too much out of my opinion, not the stuff that good.

00;43;21;29 - 00;43;23;14
Speaker 2
Exactly. Exactly.

00;43;23;15 - 00;43;29;19
Speaker 1
Fiction. That's why you have to make the subject's opinion. So it's, it's a it's a fun dichotomy to look.

00;43;29;21 - 00;43;33;05
Speaker 3
Yeah, for sure. And I love that word dichotomy. How good a word is that?

00;43;33;11 - 00;43;35;12
Speaker 1
It's a good word.

00;43;35;23 - 00;43;37;19
Speaker 3
You could use that in fiction and nonfiction.

00;43;37;27 - 00;43;41;27
Speaker 1
The last question we always ask because this is literary hype. What books are you hyped about?

00;43;41;29 - 00;44;01;20
Speaker 2
So, oh, I have two books that I've just read that are coming up soon as new releases. Janet Scarcely and Charles, who wrote the brilliant The Paris Library, has a new book coming out. Good. Miss Morgan's book, great set in France in World War One. And Janet is just one of your dream authors. You know, we're not you see an author's name and you just relax.

00;44;01;20 - 00;44;22;24
Speaker 2
You know, you're in safe hands slipping into a warm bath. She's such an accomplished storyteller. I knew that this book was going to be brilliant. I wondered how she'd outdo the Paris library, but she definitely has this. This is it is a gem. You should get her on actually to talk about it, because the story of the librarians working in France during World War One so close to the front line is astonishing.

00;44;22;24 - 00;44;47;23
Speaker 2
And she's done it justice. She really has. So I'm really loving that. I also am loving by Jill Poole, a novel called Scandalous Women. And it's a novel of Jackie Collins and the author of Valley of the Dolls. I think she's called Jackie, Jacqueline, Susan and it's just so good. It really took me back to growing up as a kid and reading Jackie Collins.

00;44;48;09 - 00;45;15;09
Speaker 2
And just this women, these two incredible authors who were real strong feminists, like breaking new ground and selling millions of books in the process. You absolutely should get Jill Paul on as I'm not doing it justice to describe it. She's she's so good at revisionist histories and looking at these two female authors and how they smashed glass ceilings and it's just written with real verve and typical Jill Paul kind of style.

00;45;15;09 - 00;45;19;19
Speaker 2
So, yeah, I love those two books. So Scandalous Women and Miss Morgan's Book Brigade.

00;45;19;24 - 00;45;22;24
Speaker 1
Well, thank you so much for taking time out of your debut. Talk to Literary.

00;45;22;24 - 00;45;25;11
Speaker 3
Oh, it's been a pleasure. Thank you for having me on.

00;45;25;16 - 00;45;29;02
Speaker 2
It's been amazing, actually. And I've loved like it's really good being interviewed by journalist.

00;45;29;26 - 00;45;34;27
Speaker 3
You know, you get a much more rigorous going over than you would otherwise. So thank you for that.

00;45;39;25 - 00;46;04;17
Speaker 1
Thanks again to you for taking time out of her day to discuss the wartime book club. I really love historical fiction. I love the World War Two space. So combining books and World War Two into this banter and uncovering true stories and, you know, fudging them a little bit for the sake of fiction. But, you know, she does do her research, and I really appreciate that the links to get Kate's books are in the show notes for you.

00;46;04;20 - 00;46;11;25
Speaker 1
If you enjoyed this conversation, don't forget to give us some stars and subscribe to the podcast. Thanks for listening to the Literary Hype podcast.