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WW1 – WW2: A story of the personal stories in war time
That They Might Lovely Be
What you need to know before your trail
No-one thought Bertie Simmonds could speak. So, when he is heard singing an Easter hymn, this is not so much the miracle some think as a bolt drawn back, releasing long-repressed emotions with potentially devastating consequences… A decade later, Bertie marries Anstace, a woman old enough to be his mother, and another layer of mystery starts to peel away. Beginning in a village in Kent and set between the two World Wars, That They Might Lovely Be stretches from the hell of Flanders, to the liberating beauty of the Breton coast, recounting a love affair which embraces the living and the dead.
Travel Guide
Kent
“If the Germans crossed the channel or dropped thousands of airborne soldiers into Kent the situation would be critical- literally a matter of life or death ”
The countryside and farmland
“What happens when the stock fails? Any child in Kent could tell you.”
“The leaves yellow and the fruit drops. The harvest is lost, The garden dies, Swollen , scented plums shrivel and sour; pears , apples and cherries all wither and …..When Old England becomes cankered , what hope can there be?”
If only in this quiet corner of Kent, Old England would be safe with me held in trust for my children and my children’s children
Belgium – Flanders
The war rages on as the novel unfolds, Flanders is the major battle field and there are references to “The theatre of war”
Perhaps if you peer over the hedgerows in out delightful corner of Kent you will see hundreds of fine men marching away into Belgium and Herbert will be one of them
France – Breton coast
They remember the time only last year when they ran free along the Breton Cliffs and that makes them hope that peace will hold, that exemption will not be rescinded and conscriptions will not take their men
Booktrailer Review
Susan: @thebooktrailer
A novel that’s quite hard to get into but which is worth the wait. The period between the two world wars is always a great time period fora novel to examine. Lots of shifts taking place, in society, attitude and more.
The Kent landscape really comes across well here and how villages in Kent were changing as the war raged miles and miles away, its effects far reaching.
Bertie was a great guide to follow through the novel and its history. He’s an adult when he first appears and go back to see him singing in church – a miracle since he’s been mute up until this point. He becomes the focus of much attention and the chain of events which spirals later in the novel starts much earlier as you soon find out.
This is a story of war, of the men who go to the front line and the women who stay behind. Letter between the two reveal a changing situation and the real raw emotions of those on both sides.
This is a complicated and tightly woven novel with threads of forbidden love and past misdemeanours, of a child who grows to be a man in every sense of the word and a story of hopelessness and redemption.
Booktrail Boarding Pass: That They Might Lovely Be
Destination: Kent, Flanders Author/Guide: David Matthews Departure Time: WW1 – WW2
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