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OBA NEWSLETTER 2003 NOVELS & THE SECOND WORLD WAR By James Holland (O83/88) Turning to the Second World War for literary inspiration is hardly original; after all, it has been written about ever since the opening shots were fired. But sixty years on, it seems to be more popular than ever, and I have to say I am only too happy to join in with this resurgence. I tried writing contemporary novels – rather lame ‘romantic comedies’ about typical middleclass types in their twenties and thirties, who worried about their jobs, girlfriends/boyfriends, money, and whether they would ever be able to afford a property that had stairs, let alone a house in the country. They were not great successes, and nor did they deserve to be, banged out as they were in a flourish along with all the other Bridget Jones and Four Weddings wannabes. So instead, I turned to a period that I was interested in, a time when young people - ordinary men and women like myself and my friends - had been faced with devastating choices, handed more responsibility than most of us are ever likely to experience in a lifetime, and faced with the kind of dangers I hope I never have to confront. The plot could still remain essentially romantic, and still be full of young twentysomethings; but with a different backdrop. A backdrop where there was no shortage of drama, a backdrop not of skinny lattes but of ersatz coffee; a backdrop of Southern England, desert sandstorms, Cairo, London, Cambridge, rather than Clapham North and Fulham. Nor would there be an amusingly clapped-out VW camper van in sight. No, if machines were going to have a part to play they could only be one thing: Spitfires. I was also quite certain that I wanted to write about the Second rather than the First World War. Although we can see names of the dead from the 1914-18 war in many villages across the land, it did not affect every man, woman and child in quite the same way as the 1939-45 conflict. All those who lived through the Second World War were touched by it: quite apart from the front lines of direct combat, there was civilian bombing, rationing, and wholesale changes to society – and that is just in Britain alone where there was no genocide. Even those who were doing the fighting were mostly civilians 2 OLD BRUTONIAN ASSOCIATION NEWSLETTER 2004
dressed up in khaki: ordinary, everyday people involved in something extraordinary, and beyond their control. Robert Ryan is the author of the bestselling Early One Morning, and another who has only recently joined the Word War II fray. He believes that the growing distance of time has played a part. After the war, those who survived wanted to forget about it and get on with their lives, while the next generation tired of hearing about the hardships endured. ‘Now,’ he says, ‘there is a new generation for whom this is fresh.’ For Alan Furst, American author of a series of highly-acclaimed wartime spy thrillers, motivation came from a listening to a piece of music. He was living in Paris when by chance he heard a recording made at Le Hot Club in 1937 and was struck by how a moment in time seemed to have been frozen. ‘You could hear the audience,’ he says, ‘it was so passionate, so romantic, but also so sophisticated.’ He realised that for those Parisians, the coming war represented not an end of the world, but the end of the world as they had known it, and this was something he wanted to write about. ‘The war was so immense,’ says Furst, ‘and so heavy with stories that it was more like a thousand wars, all of them going on at once, with everyone either a hero, a villain, a fugitive, a victim, but something.’ In other words, extremely rich in human drama, and infinitely more interesting to write about than today’s generation with their obsessions about looks, weight and wearing the right kind of designer footwear. The futility of our current fascination with the trivial things in life was borne home to me during my research. Not only is the Second World War fabulously well documented, there are still a large number of survivors still alive. Someone I met was Roland ‘Bee’ Beamont, a highly successful fighter pilot who after the war had gone on to perform pioneering work with jet aircraft. He was such good company and had achieved so much that after talking to him, I wondered how I could be interested in celebrity culture ever again. He was also typically modest and down-to-earth, and began telling me a story about how, in 1941, he had forgotten to fix up any transport to a party for him and his girlfriend, and so had decided to take her in his Hurricane instead. This was highly illegal and unfortunately he was caught as he landed again (having been to the party and consumed a number of drinks). Court-martialled, he was given a good wrap over the knuckles and was soon after promoted to Squadron Leader. ‘It’s the way things happen in wartime,’ he told me. ‘Nobody took life so seriously. After sixty years of peace, every possible thing that happens in this country is investigated, over-exaggerated, hyped up, people sued for everything. In those days it was an incredibly casual life.’ He did admit that he had initially been worried about being court-martialled, but then thought, ‘Well to hell with that. None of us has got any future in the air force. We’re not going to last more than a month or a year at the most. So it really didn’t matter.’ For me, this was a crucial point. Writing about the war would not only give me opportunities to describe terrific action set-pieces, it would offer me a chance to create a world where people lived by different – and far OBA NEWSLETTER 2003 more attractive – priorities than they do today. There was simply no point in getting worked up over the minutiae of life when you might be dead tomorrow. Elizabeth Jane Howard, author of the much-loved Cazalet Chronicles,was sixteen when the war began, and admits her novels are, to a degree, autobiographical. ‘We felt very drawn together as a nation,’ she says, ‘and that is something I think we miss.’ She cited an occasion during the Blitz when she found herself in a taxi during a raid. The driver suddenly stopped and she thought he was going turf her out because it was too dangerous to continue. But he had stopped only to offer her a cigarette. Like many back then, she was also a vociferous letterwriter, a fact that is very useful for novelists. This is now a dying form of communication. Email and txtg has not made us letter-writers once more; instead, as most of my (university-educated) friends have proved, it has reduced us to a state of near-illiteracy. Fortunately, however, I do now receive many hand-written letters, and can agree with Elizabeth Jane Howard that they provide much pleasure. Most veterans of the war, now in their eighties, still prefer to make contact this way, and so through my research for both this novel and other projects, I regularly receive pleasurable post in amongst the bills, unbeatable offers and enticements to rack up debt. Meeting people like Bee Beamont can also be very humbling. Just as in any walk of life, there are those one warms to more than others, but most have incredible stories to tell: stories of understated bravery and tenacity, of extreme hardship, and of suffering and loss. Yet they also talk of the extraordinary camaraderie, and of a time in their life when, despite the constant threat of death, they never felt more alive. ‘It was a very intense time,’ says Elizabeth Jane Howard. Whenever she said goodbye to someone she really did wonder whether it would be for the last time, which was ‘quite hard to deal with.’ As Robert Ryan also points out, there is a very real sense that time is running out. ‘Those who lived through the war are a dying generation. In another ten or fifteen years there will be very few left.’ It’s a sobering thought, especially as I have made new friends who fall into that category. No doubt their values will die with them too, which is very sad, because although no one in their right mind would want to live through such a period, people were often far better at living life than we are today. (This article first appeared in The Times newspaper.) James’s first history book, Fortress Malta: An Island Under Siege 1940-1943, has proved a critical and commercial success. He has more recently published his third novel, The Burning Blue (Heinemann, £14.99). This is about Joss Lambert, a fighter pilot in North Africa in the early part of the Second World War. We are allowed to follow Joss’s progress through school, Cambridge – where he learns to fly – basic training and, subsequently, the Battle of Britain. The book contains many thrilling moments as well as revealing a deep love of the English countryside for which these young men were offering their lives. OLD BRUTONIAN ASSOCIATION NEWSLETTER 2004 3
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