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During the Second World War, Ruth Brook escaped Nazi persecution in Germany and followed her wartime sweetheart, a Lancaster Bomber into the RAF. As a WAAF, she quickly found a sense of her own purpose. 

Ruth was offered a job as a cook, a typist or a flight mechanic. She picked up a spanner and her life began. From welding to hydraulics, WW2 was a intense training ground for a young woman starting out in life. In her 101 years Ruth has packed a lot in. From working as a flight mechanic to a post-war publisher, and then a psychotherapist, Ruth has  lived a life rich with adventure. I was lucky enough to meet this extraordinary woman in her London home.

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Former policewoman and district nurse turned novelist, Jean Fullerton has written over 20 novels but recently published something a bit closer to home, her memoir, A Child of the East End. In conversation at the Write Idea Festival, Jean shared eye-watering stories of her childhood in Wapping, the curse of family secrets, bum-stamping and sexism in the police force and why we romanticise the past, Jean proves there is no such thing as a ordinary life. I started by asking her what made her bare her soul in the pages of a book…

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In the 19th century it was surprisingly easy for a woman to be consigned to the  misery of an asylum. Many in fact weren't actually mentally ill.

Husband tired of his wife? A woman who bore an illegitimate child? A woman who didn't want to marry the man her parents had chosen for her? Or anyone, in short, who didn't conform to the narrow standards of society.

Once a woman was incarcerated, it was almost impossible to get out of a place often described as 'death traps'.

Author Louisa Treger came across the astonishing true story of investigative journalist Nellie Bly, who intentionally got herself committed to an asylum in order to write a blistering expose and lift the lid on conditions. She was 'instantly hooked and intrigued' as she told me in this fascinating conversation.

Louisa also discusses her fascinating new novel, The Paris Muse, a fictionalized retelling of the disturbing love story between talented French photographer Dora Maar and Pablo Picasso. Louisa shares her motivation behind ensuring this talented woman is no longer a footnote and how she breathed life into this extraordinary love affair.

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Historical fiction author Kristy Cambron wears a lot of hats. 

She's a Christy Award-winning author of historical fiction, including her bestselling novels, THE BUTTERFLY AND THE VIOLIN and THE PARIS DRESSMAKER, as well as nonfiction titles. She also serves as Vice President and literary agent with Gardner Literary, where she was named ACFW Agent of the Year in 2024.

Kristy squeezed in time to chat with me about our shared love of research and forgotten stories from the past. Her latest novel is a must read for those who can't resist a wartime tale and a dusty second-hand bookshop!

Inspired by real accounts of the Forgotten Blitz bombings, The British Booksellers highlights the courage of those whose lives were forever changed by war—and the stories that bind us in the fight for what matters most.

A tenant farmer’s son had no business daring to dream of a future with an earl’s daughter, but that couldn’t keep Amos Darby from his secret friendship with Charlotte Terrington . . . until the reality of the Great War sobered youthful dreams. Now decades later, he bears the brutal scars of battles fought in the trenches and their futures that were stolen away. His return home doesn’t come with tender reunions, but with the hollow fulfillment of opening a bookshop on his own and retreating as a recluse within its walls.

When the future Earl of Harcourt chose Charlotte to be his wife, she knew she was destined for a loveless match. Though her heart had chosen another long ago, she pledges her future even as her husband goes to war. Twenty-five years later, Charlotte remains a war widow who divides her days between her late husband’s declining estate and operating a quaint Coventry bookshop—Eden Books, lovingly named after her grown daughter. And Amos is nothing more than the rival bookseller across the lane.

As war with Hitler looms, Eden is determined to preserve her father’s legacy. So when an American solicitor arrives threatening a lawsuit that could destroy everything they’ve worked so hard to preserve, mother and daughter prepare to fight back. But with devastation wrought by the Luftwaffe’s local blitz terrorizing the skies, battling bookshops—and lost loves, Amos and Charlotte—must put aside their differences and fight together to help Coventry survive.

From deep in the trenches of the Great War to the storied English countryside and the devastating Coventry Blitz of WWII, The British Booksellers explores the unbreakable bonds that unite us through love, loss, and the enduring solace that can be found between the pages of a book.

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Neil Barclay is an award-winning civilian librarian at HMP Thameside. Nominated by prisoners, and described by his colleagues as “our library superstar”, Neil has been praised for the outstanding dedication, skill and creativity he has shown in transforming the prison’s library into a dynamic learning and resource centre, much valued by prisoners and staff, and described as “the envy of other prisons”. 

Here he shares with us his passionate belief that books and reading have the power to rehabilitate and transform prisoners lives.

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Rachel Hore is the multi-million selling Sunday Times author of thirteen novels with her fourteenth, Secrets of Dragonfly Lodge, coming out next year.

Rachel is an avid reader. 'My reading addiction got properly under way when I was five and our family moved from Surrey, England, where I was born, to live in Hong Kong because of my father’s job. I loved Hong Kong, but I also missed home, and one of the great excitements was receiving parcels of books from relatives in the UK. When the tropical heat got to me, which it often did, being red-haired with fair skin, I’d lie on my bed and lose myself in Enid Blyton, Black Beauty or the Chronicles of Narnia.'

Her love for tales about the past was born from reading books by historical authors like Cynthia Harnett, Hilda Lewis and Rosemary Sutcliff.

'During my early teenage years I perused Jackie magazine and longed for romance, but instead fell in love with English literature. I tried Jane Austen and the Brontës, raided my grandfather’s bookshelf for Dickens and my local library for Virginia Woolf, George Orwell and Wilkie Collins. I owe a huge debt to the public library system and believe passionately that we should maintain it for future generations.'

In this conversation, Rachel and I talk about her latest book, the craft of writing and the mysterious photo which triggered her journey into Cornwall's wartime past

You can learn more about Rachel and her wonderful books, here 

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Donna Jones Alward is prolific author, writing over sixty novels. Here she explains why her first historical fiction novel, When the World Fell Silent, challenged her to grapple with a dark chapter in Canada's history...


When the World Fell Silent
A Globe and Mail and Toronto Star bestseller

1917. Halifax, Nova Scotia

Nora Crowell wants more than her sister’s life as a wife and mother. As WWI rages across the Atlantic, she becomes a lieutenant in the Canadian Army Nursing Corp. But trouble is looming and it won’t be long before the truth comes to light.
Having lost her beloved husband in the trenches and with no-one else to turn to, Charlotte Campbell now lives with his haughty relations who treat her like the help. It is baby Aileen, the joy and light of her life, who spurs her to dream of a better life.
When tragedy strikes in Halifax Harbour, nothing for these two women will ever be the same again. Their paths will cross in the most unexpected way, trailing both heartbreak and joy its wake…

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When Brian was diagnosed with bowel cancer in 2010, his friend Alison offered to write letters to cheer him up. Over the next two years, as Brian’s cancer moved from stage III to IV, Alison’s letters kept on coming.

The letters became part of Brian’s recovery process, while Alison discovered a passion for writing she never knew existed. 

Brian is now cancer-free, Alison is a writer, and the two have a relationship that only the term ‘best friends’ can describe. Alison and Brian are now dedicated to getting us all writing letters through their charity, https://www.frommetoyouletters.co.uk/about

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What happens when ordinary people are faced with extraordinary choices?

In her second blistering novel set on the Channel Island of Jersey, Beyond Summerland, author Jenny Le Coat turns her attentions to the often overlooked issue of what happened after Liberation Day...

Jean Parris was a child when her adored father was taken away by the Nazis. As she and her mother wait anxiously for news, the life Jean thought she knew begins to fall apart.

Hazel Le Tourneur has never conformed to the island’s idea of perfect womanhood. But is she the worst kind of collaborator – an informer?

In the summer of 1945, the Liberation of Jersey has unleashed a different kind of war: one of suspicion, accusation and revenge. For among the heroism and sacrifice, there has also been betrayal and corruption. And while the beautiful island is permanently scarred by gun towers and bunkers, its people must learn to live with a different kind of wound – the desire for truth.

Jenny Lecoat is a novelist and screenwriter. Her debut novel The Girl From the Channel Islands was a New York Times bestseller.

In the 1980s she was one of the first female stand-ups on the UK Alternative Comedy circuit, before going on to write for magazines and newspapers, and later for television.

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This July marks the 136th anniversary of the matchwomens strike at Bryant & May match factory in London's East End in 1888.

Exposing the truth of the ‘poor waif matchgirl’ historian Louise Raw fills us in on the true story of the vibrant working class women who downed tools, went on strike and changed the course of history.

Her work on the Bryant and May Matchwomen altered the way the modern trade union movement was understood.  "It was actually begun by young women and girls, regarded by their supposed betters as the 'lowest of the low'," Louise explains in this episode, "but who changed the world for working women, using sisterhood and long hatpins!"

Thank you to our media partner: Family History Zone – a website covering archives, history and genealogy. Please check then out at www.familyhistory.zone and consider signing up for their free weekly newsletter.