Sheila’s letters form the bulk of primary source material, along with her photos and mementos from scrapbooks, including newspaper cuttings, dinner menus, service sheets and other ephemera.
Interviews with Sheila’s surviving older sister, Rosemary, then 95, but whose memory was poor. She went to Egypt with the WAAF towards the end of the war, and met with some of Sheila’s old boyfriends. She was also aware of the family history.
Interview with Sheila’s cousin Hazel Dixon.
A recorded interview with my father shortly before he died in 2012.
Artemis Cooper, Cairo in the War: 1939–45 (John Murray, 2013)
Lawrence Durrell, The Alexandria Quartet (Faber & Faber, 2012 edition)
Sarah Helm, If This Is A Woman (Little, Brown, 2015)
Eric Lomax, The Railway Man (Jonathan Cape, 1995)
Olivia Manning, The Levant Trilogy (The Danger Tree, The Battle Lost and Won, The Sum of Things (Phoenix edition, 1983))
Alan Moorhead, African Trilogy: The North African Campaign 1940–43 (Cassell, new edition, 2000)
S.W.C. Pack, Operation Husky: The Allied Invasion of Sicily (David and Charles, 1977)
Dieter Südhoff, translated by Angela Ladd, Hermann Ungar: a Life and Works (available to download from smashwords via www.hermannungar.com)
Evelyn Waugh, Sword of Honour (Penguin Modern Classics, 2001)