From the Library With Love

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Louise Fein is a bestselling historical fiction writer of books set mainly in the early half of the twentieth century. Her novels explore turbulent times, social change, ideas and themes still relevant today.

Her latest release, out this week, The London Bookshop Affair is a is a gripping story of secrets and love set against the backdrop of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

In this conversation we get under the skin of historical fiction, chatting about the challenges and joys of research, writing, plotting and routines.  And why books about books have such a hold on our heart.

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.

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Andie Newton is the USA Today bestselling author of THE GIRLS FROM THE BEACH, THE GIRL FROM VICHY and THE GIRL I LEFT BEHIND. She has a Bachelor’s degree in History from Washington State University and a Master in Teaching.

In this conversation we talk about, A Child for the Reich. inspired by the Nazi kidnapping programme, the challenges and joys of writing historical fiction and where she finds inspiration for her bestselling books.

Andie's latest book, The Secret Pianist, is out now.

Sisters. Traitors. Spies.
When a British RAF Whitley plane comes under fire over the French coast and is forced to drop their cargo, a spy messenger pigeon finds its way into unlikely hands…

The occupation has taken much from the Cotillard sisters, and as the Germans increase their forces in the seaside town of Boulogne-sur-Mer, Gabriella, Martine and Simone can’t escape the feeling that the walls are closing in.

Yet, just as they should be trying to stay under the radar, Martine’s discovery of a British messenger pigeon leads them down a new and dangerous path. Gaby would do anything to protect her sisters but when the pianist is forced to teach the step-daughter of a German Commandant, and the town accuses the Cotillards of becoming ‘Bad French’ and in allegiance with the enemy, she realizes they have to take the opportunity to fight back that has been handed to them.

Now, as the sisters’ secrets wing their way to an unknown contact in London, Gaby, Martine and Simone have to wonder – have they opened a lifeline, or sealed their fate?

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.

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Congratulations Nancy Revell on the publication of her new book,  A Widow’s Choice, out today!

Sometimes a book comes along which readers take to their hearts. When Nancy Revell wrote The Shipyard Girls it was an instant success. By the time she had finished Book 12 in the series it continuously made the Sunday Times bestseller list and cemented Nancy as one of Britain’s best-loved saga writers. In this fascinating conversation she reveals how reading Gone with the Wind changed her life and the lengths she went to walk in the footsteps of her characters… 

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.

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St Bride's Church on London’s Fleet Street is one of the most famous and fascinating historic churches in central London. It is known worldwide as the journalists church, offering a spiritual home to all who work in the media.

What other churches have risen from the ashes of The Great Fire of London and the Blitz,  acted as a source of support for the poor during the Plague years and inspired the design of the wedding cake?

The story of St Bride's is inextricably woven into the heritage of the City of London with a history that stretches back an astonishing 2000 years. Its current rector aptly has a passion for history. The Reverend Dr Alison Joyce was appointed in 2014 and says she ‘probably has the most interesting job in the Church of England.’

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.

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For many years now I have tramped the streets of east London in search of history. Unbeknown to me another woman has also been doing the same, but her gaze is fixed on the history you cannot see, the history beneath our feet.

Sam Perrin has been a cemetery and death historian for over twenty years, conducting tours of east London plague pits and cemeteries in search of past lives. She holds an MA in Victorian Studies from Birkbeck, University of London, and is currently researching the mass burial sites of epidemic victims.

“London is a deathly layer cake. We are constantly walking over the dead,' she reveals. Come and take a virtual tour underground.

You can find out more about Sam's tours here, and contact her here:

Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @misssamperrin
Blog: http://misssamperrin.blogspot.com

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.

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Letter writing is a dying art, but fortunately, there are some wonderfully creative souls around resurrecting old love letters and breathing life into them. One of them is Liz Maguire, the love letter collector and originator of  https://www.fleamarketloveletters.com , originally from Washington D.C. and now living in Dublin.

From her first acquisition as a teenager of a set of vintage love letters from a flea market, Liz now holds a collection of over 1600 letters. She told me,
‘Letters capture the essence of what it is to be living through history. In attics, and drawers and shoe boxes under beds there are hundreds of stories waiting to be told.’ Here we delve into her unique archive…

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.

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You’re 12 years old. Your mother is dead and your father has gone missing. You are wrenched from everyone you know and love and put on a train and sent from your home to a new country, where you don’t speak the language, with a group of total strangers.  And you have no idea whether you will ever set eyes on your family again. This was the terrifying reality facing Gabriel Weiss when she boarded a Kindertransport train out of Nazi occupied Vienna in April 1939 and was sent to live in England in the months building up to World War Two. On the 85th anniversary of the Kindertransport scheme, the 97 year old shares her extraordinary story…

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.

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20th July 1941. It is a dark night in war-torn Britain. In blacked out Sussex a band of men sit huddled in an old shed, deep in the countryside. One by one they make a pledge to join a very special little wartime club. A toast is drunk to the forming of The Guinea Pig Club.

It was the most exclusive club in the world, but as the founding member admitted, "the entrance fee is something most men would not care to pay and the conditions are arduous in the extreme".

The club was made up of Allied Aircrew who were all being treated by surgeon Archibald McIndoe for horrific burns suffered whilst in active combat.

McIndoe was something of a pioneer, using groundbreaking plastic surgery techniques. He passionately believed that if the injured airmen were to have any future he needed to help them recover their place in the world.

Unconventional, the doctor encouraged drinking and flirting with the nurses on the ward. One of the nurses granddaughter's, Dr Emily Mayhew, a military medical historian and author of The Guinea Pig Club: Archibald McIndoe and the RAF in WW11 lifts the lid on a extraordinary wartime club.

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.

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August 2023 marked 60 years since one of the most iconic crimes of the 20th century – the Great Train Robbery.

Ronnie Biggs emerged as the most notorious member of the gang, and today is synonymous with the 1960s as Lord Lucan and the Profumo Affair. In this conversation, his biographer and friend Chris Pickard gives us a glimpse into his colourful and audacious life. His fascinating book on Ronnie, The Great Train Robber, my autobiography, is out now.

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8 August 1963. It is the early hours of the morning, and a group of men are waiting at a railway bridge in Buckinghamshire. They are about to rob a mail train, on its way to London from Glasgow, and they have no idea that on board they will find approximately £2.5 million (over £50 million in today's money) in cash - the largest of its time. 

Among their number is Ronnie Biggs. He will be remembered long after most of the other names are forgotten, and the money spent or lost. 

What is it about Ronnie Biggs that fascinates people sixty years on from the crime that made his name? Is it the man or the myth that makes Ron a latter-day Robin Hood - the odd man in the confederation of criminals who held up a train on that fateful day? 

This is Ronnie Biggs' official autobiography. It tells of one of the most extraordinary lives of the twentieth century. From Ron's daring escape from HMP Wandsworth, to how he managed to outwit and outrun a posse of law enforcement officers as one of the world's most wanted men; from plastic surgery in Paris, and his years on the run in Brazil - complete with two kidnappings and an attempted suicide - to his return to the UK after 13,087 extraordinary days on the run. 

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.

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She’s written 24 books, many of them critically acclaimed, four of them Sunday Times Bestsellers and one of them in just three weeks, but you’ve probably never heard of her. Shannon Kyle is a ghost-writer.

Ghost-writing has long been publishing’s best-kept secret. An estimated ninety per cent of memoirs and non-fiction books on bestseller lists have been written by ghost-writers, yet few readers knew this. But times are changing. Thanks to a number of high profile stories the veil of secrecy has been lifted and now we are getting to know the mysterious ghosts behind some of Britain’s biggest bestsellers. Shannon has written for numerous celebrities, but as she explains in this fascinating insight into her life, it's telling extraordinary stories of ordinary people that inspires her most.

Shannon is co-creator of The Ghostwriters Agency with Teena Lyons about six months ago. https://www.theghostwritersagency.com The UK's first online platform that matches bestselling and award winning ghostwriters with clients who want to write books.

She also has her own podcast called Giving Up the Ghostcast, where she interviews bestselling ghostwriters about their experiences. 

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.