Posts | Nothing But The Past

07/04/2016 · 3:23 pm

A Backdrop to Drama

Early 20th century living room at The Geffrye Museum

I wanted to re-imagine a particular domestic interior which would be witness to confessions, secrets, and dangerous passions for my first novel. It had to be a middle class London town house, the sort a well-to-do manager in charge of a large, WWI munitions factory might live in. This was to be the room where the central drama of my heroine’s life would play out.

From research, I learned that by the first part of the 20th century, the drawing-room had given way to the sitting room or living room. It was now furnished for everyday use and for comfort. It was much less formal than in previous eras. Electric lights were installed and the fireplace was still a focal point in the room. Furnishings and upholstery complemented each other but didn’t necessarily match. Reproductions of 18th century furniture were all the rage and less fussy wallpapers in light colours became fashionable.

You can find some of the settings and furnishings which inspired me on my Pinterest board, here http://uk.pinterest.com/hughes7584/inspiration-early-twentieth-century-house/

From these emerged my vision of an elegant room, with tall windows leading onto the rear garden (a ‘war patch’ of vegetables mainly replaced flower beds during the first world war). In the mornings, letters and cards would be written sitting at an 18th century reproduction escritoire or table; in the afternoons, visitors might take tea from Wedgwood tea cups; of an evening the room’s ambient lighting would come from one or two art-nouveau inspired lamps and a shellac record of popular songs of the day would be playing on a HMV gramophone.

I was helped in creating the imaginary room by a visit to The Geffrye Museum of the Home www.geffrye-museum.org.uk in East London, where a number of period rooms have been recreated. Attendant mood boards showing soft furnishing and flooring materials provide extra details. There is a small library holding relevant reference books for further study.

Book research is a useful starting point when I am trying to ‘get inside’ a period. Seeing a fully furnished room adds an extra dimension.

Any photographs are the author’s own.

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Tagged as 20th century, A Kiss from France, domestic interiors, geffrye museum, Great Britain, historical fiction, inspiration

17/02/2016 · 2:44 pm

12 Benefits of Joining a Writing Group

No man is an island…

My previous experience with my first novel showed me the importance and benefits of getting early critiques of my second novel. So last year I joined a writing group.

Last time, the first eyeballs on my manuscript (other than my own) were those of a structural editor. Needless to say, the amount of red pen required made it look like she’d bled all over it. Poor thing. This time round, with my current work-in-progress, I have found that joining a writing group has been a more helpful, supportive and just plain fun way to get early input.

The group meets once a month, face-to-face. It is designed primarily for writers working on a novel. We begin with a round-up of everyone’s progress on their current project, discuss any challenges and offer suggestions, followed by two selected writers reading their work aloud for a group critique. I have read out different sections of my work-in-progress on several occasions. Not every comment I received was a glowing appraisal but each one offered some useful take-away to help me refine my writing.

Writing Benefits of the Group

Provides a discipline and a deadline to produce regular work
Prompts me to hone the work I am reading aloud so it’s the best it can be
Allows others to critically engage with my story and characters early on
Provides honest and insightful feedback
Hones my own ability to give and receive constructive criticism
Gives encouragement and support to improve my work
Points out glaring errors (e.g. chronology; consistency; continuity)
Inspires me to keep writing

Social Benefits of the Group

Gets me out of my lonely writer’s garret
Encourages me to engage with other writers in person: to laugh; to celebrate; to commiserate; to be inspired by real people (not ones I’ve made up!)
Lets me join with a group of people who understand what it is to be a writer
Reminds me I am human.

I am very lucky to be part of such a writing group. Thank you, fellow scribes. You know who you are.

‘No man is an island…’ from the poem by John Donne

photograph © Susan Hughes

The Powerful Symbolism of the Poppy

: Tower of London poppy 2014

Today is Remembrance Sunday. In Britain, it began in 1919 as a commemoration of the fallen of WW1, men whose bodies would never be brought home. Poppies, which grew in abundance in the field of Flanders and France during that war, became the symbol of remembrance.

Each year I buy a paper poppy to wear on my lapel. Last year, I also bought a ceramic poppy which had formed part of the moving and evocative ‘Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red’ installation at the Tower of London.

My Tower poppy is a simple, handmade ceramic artefact. Its metal stem even retains a vestige of earth from the ground it stood in. On its own, it lacks the dramatic impact of the complete art installation. Between August and November 2014, 888,246 scarlet poppies filled the Tower moat. It was no longer its usual green grass, but a visceral sea of red. A poppy cascade flowed into the moat from one of the Tower’s high windows. A crimson wave arched, tsunami-like, over the Tower’s entrance. Each poppy represented one British and Commonwealth fatality in WW1. Here was poignancy and tragedy but also beauty and remembrance.

The Tower of London November 2014

As each poppy got picked, sold in part to raise money for service charities, the moat emptied. The sea of red receded and disappeared.

The real and lasting value of my Tower poppy lies in its symbolism. It has the power to move my spirit and to evoke something beyond itself. In this time and this place, it helps me remember and honour not only the sacrifice made in 1914-1918, but all those who have suffered and died in war.

Lest we forget.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders Fields.

(In Flanders Fields, 1915. Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae)

Only Connect: Inspiration from WW1

When I picked out a hundred year old silk postcard from among my late grandmother’s possessions, I had no idea that it would lead me to a WW1 battle, a scandal which many believed caused the Liberal government to fall in 1915 and a tiny detail about a dangerous munitions factory – and to writing my debut novel, ‘A Kiss from France’.

Initially, the postcard fascinated me and I often found myself looking at it because of its romantic greeting. Gradually an idea began to take root in my mind and prompted me to find out more about the circumstances in which the sender and recipient might have found themselves between 1914-1918.

I discovered that a scandalous shortage of ammunition shells, after the battle of Neuve Chapelle (1915), was one of the reasons the British government was brought down and that it led to the establishment of munitions factories to increase armaments production. When Conscription (1916) took away most of the able-bodied men who had not already enlisted, hundreds of thousands of women rallied to the call to step up and support the war effort by making munitions. I became interested in these women’s stories. Then I picked out a tiny nugget of information, which lit the imaginative spark. These munitionettes (as the female munitions workers became known) put ‘Good Luck’ notes in random boxes of ammunition shells, destined for the British Army fighting in Europe.

My imagined letter from a WW1 munitionette

Suddenly, there it was! I saw a British Tommy standing in a trench, finding one of these notes from a girl he had never met and sending a patriotic silk postcard in reply. Immediately I knew this was going to provide the inciting incident for the whole novel and that all of the twists and turns in the story would stem from this – and also that the romantic greeting on the postcard I had in my possession would be the title of my novel.

A Kiss from France is available as an e-book or paperback from Amazon. Paperback is also available to order from bookshops.

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Tagged as munitionettes, Neuve Chapelle, romance, war effort, war letters, writing, WW1, WW1 silk postcards

04/03/2015 · 12:45 pm

An Eye-Level Life: Part One (My Supernatural Serendipity)

When I am at home I am often guilty of leading what I have come to call an ‘eye-level life’. Yesterday, for some unknown reason, I broke this habit and found something surprising. The plaque commemorating the Bideford Witches.

Photo of plaque commemorating The Bideford Witches

Plaque commemorating The Bideford Witches, hanged in 1682

Bideford Town Hall. Bideford Witches plaque bottom left

Normally I go about my ordinary daily activities, paying little attention to my everyday surroundings and without raising my eyes above my normal line of vision. Yet when I am abroad or visiting a different town or city I go to its museums, look at its monuments and plaques, take photographs and generally delight in my unfamiliar environment. My lack of curiosity – familiarity breeds contempt, perhaps? – about my local environment has caused me to be unaware of a fascinating piece of local history for ten years.

It is ironic that my fascination with Arthur Miller’s allegorical play, The Crucible, based on the Salem witch trials in Massachusetts between 1692-93, made me eager to visit the town which had been so consumed by witchcraft hysteria and had inspired a powerful piece of drama. I travelled hundreds of miles and yet here, virtually on my doorstep, was a tale of witchcraft much closer to home.

I discovered that Temperence Lloyd, Susannah Edwards and Mary Trembles were tried, found guilty of practising witchcraft and went to the gallows on dubious confessions and evidence which was little more than malicious rumour and hearsay. Thousands of women were executed in England for ‘the crime of witchcraft’ during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and yet by 1682, the date of the Bideford Witches’ executions, the witchcraft hysteria was well on the wane and other women similarly accused were pardoned. Ben Bradshaw, MP for Exeter, has called it ‘a stain on our history’ and a campaign for a posthumous pardon for these three women was started in 2014.

It is likely these three – one, by some accounts, a senile old woman – were simply victims of religious hatred or intolerance or ignorance but perhaps there were other things in the Bideford of that time which caused them to be so unfortunately singled out. Women accusers revelling in the temporary influence and prominence their testimonies gave them in a society in which they had neither? Old scores being settled? Jealousy? Financial gain? To teach them a lesson? Perhaps their accusers expected them to be pardoned after all and never meant for them to be hanged? It is likely that we will never know the answer but that’s where imagination can take over and fill in the gaps.

I enjoy delving into the past to find inspiration for my writing and this experience has reminded me what nuggets of our past can be missed by leading an eye-level life in everyday routines. So I have made a promise to myself to break the habit.

Inspiration is all around us, if we only bother to take the time to look up and see it.

Nothing But The Past

A Backdrop to Drama

Any photographs are the author’s own.

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