![]() Twilight, the series of fantasy romance novels, was all the rage among young people just then. But I also had to keep those pages turning. ![]() ![]() I hoped the book would spark a life-long interest but I knew it might be the only one many teenagers would ever read about Britain’s involvement in the Spanish civil war. So when I started work on A World Between Us, the story of a nurse, a journalist and a young communist East Ender who go to Spain in 1936, I felt a great sense of responsibility. Aid for Spain is a distant memory and the Spanish civil war barely gets a mention in school history lessons. Moira encouraged me to learn poetry by heart in case I found myself in a prison cell without a book - that can happen after a protest, she explained.īut now there is nobody left alive in Britain who fought with the International Brigades. ![]() ![]() I grew up with Jack and Moira Gaster, grandparents who talked to me about taking part in the Battle of Cable Street and of friends who died in Spain. This truth came home to me when I realised how little my children’s generation knew about the anti-fascist struggles of the 1930s. JUST as history has to be rewritten in every generation because the present always changes, so too does historical fiction for the young. ![]()
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