I had an unexpected but lovely conversation with a young relative today, someone I’d never spoken to before as they love abroad. They were asking about family history, especially about what my uncle had done during the war. This uncle was in the Royal Navy and served on a flower class Corvette, The Oxlip which was launched in 1941 and was on the notorious and very dangerous Arctic convoys. They were doing a school project, so I mentioned that my dad was in the Parachute Regiment and another uncle was in the Royal Air Force.
We then moved on to talking more generally and they said they loved reading – I must say, they sounded a lot like a young me, history and reading? Oh yes! They told me what they were reading – ‘Lord of the Rings’, ‘Jane Eyre’, and other classics, and I told them about books I’d loved when i was their age – and like them, had read adult books as well as children’s. I mentioned Rosemary Sutcliff – I think I read all of her books that were then available, and because there wasn’t such a wide selection in the library when I was a child, I read all of them and many more than once! Many of them were dramatised or read as serials on the radio, on Children’s Hour, a fantastic program to which i owe much as a writer and story-teller.
I will compile a list of books they might enjoy, including my friend Hamish MacNeil’s excellent novel, ‘ The Strange Discoveries at Wimblestone Road’
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Strange-Discoveries-Wimblestone-Road-children/dp/1838434607
My featured image is of my and my friend, at a similar age to my cousin, reading on the lawn of our home in Cambridge,
Lois Elsden 