Dear Reader,

 

The story of my new novel, Nemesis, mostly takes place in the last days of peace and the first days of war in August/September 1939. No one knew what sort of war it would be – but they feared that gas bombs would be dropped on cities and they worried that there would be a return to the horrors of trench warfare.

One thing was certain: the role of America would be crucial. Winston Churchill certainly understood this better than most – and very quickly opened a secret correspondence with President Roosevelt, pleading for warships.

Would America join the fight against fascism – or would they stay out? That question is at the heart of my story.

In researching the book, I wanted to know how people felt at the time. So I read many diaries, newspapers, letters and memoirs based on diaries – contemporary accounts of major events and everyday life.

I love these testimonies because – unlike history books – they were written at a time when no one knew what the outcome would be.

Here are some fabulous examples:

Wednesday, August 30th, 1939: ‘We passed the night in a deserted hotel in a deserted Nice. Early in the morning I went down to buy L’Eclaireur du Sud-Est, and when I had finished reading the editorial (which advocated peace at any price) I ran up the stairs like a madman to break the news to G that there would be no war.’ Arthur Koestler, Scum of the Earth. ‘G’ was his twenty-one-year-old lover, the sculptor Daphne Hardy.

Thursday, August 31st, 1939: ‘It has been decided to evacuate three million mothers and children tomorrow from the menaced areas. The six o’ clock news is very glum. It is odd to feel that the world as I knew it has only a few more hours to run.’ Harold Nicolson, diary.

Friday, September 1st, 1939: ‘Today, early in the morning, Germany attacked Poland without any prior warning. So war has begun and the world has crossed the threshold of a new epoch. It will emerge from it much changed.’ The diary of Ivan Maisky, Soviet ambassador to London.

Saturday, September 2nd, 1939: ‘Awful news: they are planning to close the theatres! I rushed off to the New to see John and Edith Evans for the last time doing The Importance.’ Diarist Joan Wyndham, Love Lessons.

Sunday, September 3rd, 1939: ‘A strange, prolonged wailing noise (the first siren of the war) broke upon the ear. We went up to the flat top of the house to see what was going on. In the clear, cool September light rose the roofs and spires of London. Above them were already rising thirty or forty cylindrical balloons. We gave the government a good mark for this evident sign of preparation.’ Winston Churchill, The Gathering Storm.

Monday, September 4th, 1939: ‘Be silent, be discreet, enemy ears are listening to you. Now get ahead, do your job and don’t worry.’ Daily Mirror editorial.

Tuesday, September 5th, 1939: ‘Hearing the accounts on the wireless of the loss of the Athenia, I remembered something, and digging in the writing-table drawer presently found what I was looking for – the Lusitania medal, struck by the German government to commemorate the sinking of this vessel on 7th May 1915, with the loss of over one thousand lives. On one side is portrayed a crowd of passengers at a Cunard shipping office taking tickets from the skeleton Death. On the other the liner, carefully modelled, showing a deck cargo of aeroplanes and guns (which she did not carry) is just vanishing below the waves.’ Lilias Rider Haggard, Norfolk Notebook.

Wednesday, September 6th, 1939: ‘I attended my first war wedding yesterday. The bridegroom wore an A.R.P Badge instead of a carnation in his buttonhole, and the bride carried a gas mask.’ Evening Standard, The Londoner’s Diary.

Thursday, September 7th, 1939: ‘I long for you to see our house – all sandbagged up and with paper strips across the windows. It looks like a fortress. Bongie does his rounds every night hammering at people’s doors if he sees a chink of light.’ Violet Bonham Carter in a letter from Gloucester Square, London, to her son Raymond. ‘Bongie’ was her husband, Sir Maurice, an air raid warden.

Friday, September 8th, 1939: ‘The first person to be executed under yesterday’s decree – Himmler has wasted no time – is one Johann Heinen of Dessau. He was shot, it’s announced, “for refusing to take part in defensive work”.’ William L. Shirer, Berlin Diary, a day after a decree authorising the death penalty for anyone endangering the defensive power of the German people.

Saturday, September 9th, 1939: ‘I heard today at the Foreign Office that the French fear the war will last at least until the spring of 1941; here we are more optimistic, though the news from Poland continues appalling.’ Sir Henry ‘Chips’ Channon, diary.

Sunday, September 10th, 1939: ‘When the siren sounded at midnight the first time, a French colonel banged at our door in the Continental Hotel. “Les avions! Les avions!” In the underground hotel kitchen we huddled in our bathrobes. An American waiting for passage home tore his gas mask out of its case and wore it for hours.’ Eric Sevareid, CBS radio reporter in Paris.

Monday, September 11th, 1939: ‘It is small wonder that, in some cases, the hospitable smiles of the first day or two have changed to lamentations and secret tears’. Unsigned letter in the Manchester Guardian telling of the hardships rural housewives face in trying to feed evacuee children on ‘one and twopence halfpenny per day’.

Tuesday, September 12th, 1939: ‘It is difficult to know whether this war is being run by Joe Kennedy, the Home Office or the fighting services. Kennedy has been telling Lord Halifax (Britain’s Foreign Secretary) exactly what he thought we should do.’ Guy Liddell, MI5 director of counter-espionage, diary.

Friday, September 22nd, 1939: ‘We will carry on the war against England with icy-cold mathematical reasoning . . . I believe the English people have been enervated by too much city living, that they are hardly capable of heroism, and that, with the exception of the old aristocracy, their culture is worthless.’ Anonymous Luftwaffe pilot in letter to Friedrich Reck, Diary Of A Man In Despair.

Thursday, September 28th, 1939: ‘Today planted out sixty spring cabbage. Might also go in for rabbits and bees. Rabbits are not to be rationed. The butcher says that people will not as a rule buy tame rabbits for eating but their ideas change when meat gets short. Titley says he made a lot of money out of rabbits at the end of the last war.’ George Orwell, diary (Titley was his neighbour).

Friday, September 29th, 1939: ‘Our ultimate war aims should be based on the goal of a long-range settlement for Europe which would prevent a recurrence of situations like the present, as well as liquidating the Nazi regime. They must therefore include plans for an incipient federalisation of Western Europe.’ Julian Huxley, letter to The Spectator.

I hope you agree that these entries are intriguing. I was particularly fascinated by the last one, by Julian Huxley – discussing the possibility of a European Union before the war had even got under way!

As always, I thank you for your interest in Tom Wilde and Lydia Morris and the world of Cambridge and Europe in bygone days. To find out more, please visit my website www.roryclements.co.uk. You can also join the Rory Clements Readers’ Club at www.bit.ly/RoryClementsClub. It only takes a moment, there is no catch and new members will automatically receive exclusive extras. Your data is private and confidential and will never be passed on to a third party, and I promise that I will only be in touch now and then with book news. If you want to unsubscribe, you can do that at any time.

Of course, I would be delighted, too, if you could spread the word about my books. Online reviews are particularly welcome, and I always read them!

I hope my books give you as much pleasure as I take from researching and writing them.

 

With my best wishes,

 

Rory