Being the life-long Anglophile that I am, I knew I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to set at least one book in this series in England. Thankfully Nora and Colin didn’t complain! My first time through the Lake District as a college student, I fell in love with the unique beauty and wild strength inherent in this part of Britain. Visiting it again, some fourteen years later, reaffirmed all that I remembered and loved about Cumbria and also gave me the chance to experience the place as Nora and Colin might have.
Brougham Castle and Keswick are both actual places in the Lake District. The history behind the castle is also factual, and the ruins are as gorgeous in real life as I hope they sound in fiction. While Larksbeck and Elmthwaite Hall are both my fictional creation, I did my best to keep the architecture, weather, and topography in keeping with those found in the Lake District.
Sheep farming is an important way of life in Cumbria. As Jack points out in the book, the Herdwick sheep have been in this region for hundreds of years. It was my immense good fortune to be educated by Jean, a Lake District sheep farmer, who explained to this suburbia girl the many aspects of sheep farming. Any errors in that regard are mine alone.
I wanted Colin to have a responsibility in the war that was as unique as the Lake District, something that isn’t always given large attention when WWI comes to mind. For those reasons, I decided to make him a member of the Royal Flying Corps (RFC). Before the war ended in 1918, the RFC combined with the Royal Naval Air Service and took the more familiar name of the Royal Air Force (RAF).
If being a soldier on the ground seemed like madness during the Great War, then being one inside the cockpit of airplane was even more so. While the world, then and now, glamorized these pilots, their job was not an easy one. Most pilots at the beginning of the war were lucky to survive two weeks—to survive the entire war was nothing short of a miracle.
The Germans, with their more sophisticated planes and ruthless killers like the Red Baron, weren’t the only challenges to Allied pilots. Many of them had logged less than twenty hours of flying before joining the combat in the skies. Learning to actually fly one of these newfangled machines wasn’t a simple task either. A number of deaths occurred, not in the famous dogfights over the battlefields, but in practice. Then there was the absence of parachutes, thought to encourage a pilot to bail instead of sticking out the fight, in the event a pilot’s plane was hit.
While the work of WWI pilots, both in battle and reconnaissance, was significant, these men didn’t escape the brutality of war simply because they were in the skies. Like all soldiers, they lost friends and relatives and the innocence of life from before the war. They likely experienced the same feelings of survivors’ guilt as their comrades on the ground.
“Shell shock,” or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), gained more attention during the First World War; however strides in helping soldiers deal with the effects of war on the brain and body would still be a long time in coming.
After four years of war, Britain experienced a post-war economic boom, but it was extremely short-lived. A recession followed, with unemployment reaching an all-time high in 1921. While other countries enjoyed relative ease and success during the “Roaring Twenties,” political, social, and economic upheaval remained prevalent in Britain.
For more information on Britain and the First World War, I recommend reading First World War Britain, by Peter Doyle (2012).
The Great War changed the world forever and not just in the number of deaths from combat or influenza. The world emerged from the First World War far less naïve as a whole, a bit more hardened, a little more resistant to the ways things had been done in the past. Social changes were occurring everywhere. And while many clung to the old way of life, there were countless others who were ready to embrace this new bold world—making it not only an intriguing time to live but an intriguing time to write about, too.