Synopsis

Based on a true story. Ted and Florrie were childhood sweethearts who in 1936, married in the church on top of the Hill where they both lived, unaware of the dark rumblings from Europe, which in a few short years were to change their lives forever. 

Ted is called up and joins an elite Airborne glider force tasked with capturing and holding the Pegasus and Horsa bridges in enemy-held Normandy vital to the success of the D-Day invasion. Their mission is a complete success but this is only the awful beginning. From there he continues to fight at the bloody Rhine Crossing, across Germany until finally meeting the Russian Army on the Baltic coast. Casualties are terrible. 

In 1946 Ted is demobbed and returns to Florrie and his young family unscathed. But only physically so, for Florrie doesn't recognise the man who returns and soon the experience of constant death and the horror of battle takes its destructive toll on him. Both he and Florrie struggle to understand and come to terms with the problem in the buttoned-up society of the 1940s and 50s. To make matters worse, Florrie's mental health begins to deteriorate. How will Ted deal with this? With the same heightened sense of duty and loyalty that won the war, or will that same stubbornness turn on him and destroy him? 

The story also looks at the lives of ordinary people in post-war England, at their values and culture, from the greyness of the fifties with the horse-drawn baker's van and the black footprints of the coal-man, to a country slowly emerging from the devastation of war and is a must read for fans of historical fiction. 

Pegasus to Paradise is an ode to both the extraordinary efforts of ordinary men and women during the Second World War, and a moving portrait of duty, survival, humour and the power of love in post-war Britain.

Excerpt

Ted clicked through the metal gate and opened the front door. He would be glad to put all this shopping down. His forehead felt clammy and he rubbed a dull ache away in his chest.

‘Florrie. You there?’

There was no answer.

Probably asleep. Better have a look.

The landing was quite dim and he didn’t see it at first. The blood red smear on the white bathroom door and the mark of two fingers.

‘What the hell?’

The words gasped.

Now he could see the dark drops on the landing carpet leading to the bedroom. His heart froze and he leant for a second against the wall. There was no sound.

‘Oh no Florrie.’

He pushed the bedroom door open, slowly, and stepped inside.

Florrie was lying on her back on the bed, both arms outstretched. Her hands and arms and clothes were soaked red. A smudge of colour around her nose. A streak slashed across her throat. Her eyes closed. Behind her, the wall was smeared and splattered crimson.

Ted recoiled as the violent scene screamed into his senses.

‘Jesus Christ.’ And hot tears flooded into his eyes. Then he realised. Something about the smell.

This wasn’t blood. He knew what blood smelled like, lots of blood. And the colour...? He moved beside Florrie and placed his fingers on her neck. The pulse beat strongly. Beside her on the bed lay