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In this episode, award-winning historical fiction author, Hazel Gaynor remembers the World War Two ‘seaevacuees’, the children sent away from Britain by sea to escape the bombings at home. This is an often-forgotten part of the history of the war, overshadowed by more familiar events, and it inspired Hazel to write her new novel, The Last Lifeboat.

Here she shares the heroine at the heart of this survival story, how she researched it and why these women and children deserve to be remembered.

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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In The Sugar Girls of Love Lane, out today, Duncan Barrett and Nuala Calvi, the authors of the Sunday Times bestseller The Sugar Girls, tell the remarkable stories of those who worked at the famous Tate & Lyle factory in Liverpool.

For over a hundred years until it closed in 1981, Henry Tate’s flagship sugar refinery at Love Lane dominated the Liverpool skyline – and was the beating heart of the local community. More than 10,000 workers passed through the doors of the factory during its lifetime, with some families counting four or even five generations of service. Young women leaving school in the post-war years were drawn by the good wages and the unrivalled social life that Tate & Lyle offered.

When they arrived, they started at the very bottom, sweeping sugar off the floors, before graduating to packing and weighing by hand. The work was tough, with girls expected to stack heavy bags of sugar onto pallets five feet high, and by the end of the day their arms were aching and their stockings full of sugar dust. But, despite the hot, heavy work, they found their own ways of having fun, and the friendships they formed would last a lifetime. As well as the female friendships, many women met their future husbands at the factory, and expected their own children to follow in their footsteps.

Duncan and Nuala's social history of the post-war era casts a warm and nostalgic look back at one of the most iconic factories in the north, bringing back a vanished era of hard work, community spirit and simple pleasures.

In this episode, Duncan reveals how he set about researching and writing his latest book, the challenges of writing non-fiction and why social histories set in the 1960s are ripe for exploration.

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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‘Reading gives us a privacy of the mind. Librarians are heroes.’ Librarian turned bestselling author Janet Skeslien Charles told me.

In this episode we discuss the remarkable true story behind the brave Parisian librarians in WW2 who inspired The Paris Library.

Her new book, Miss Morgan's Book Brigade, out April 30 2024, based on a true story of a group of intrepid women who lived in a crumbling chateau 40 miles from the front in WW1 to help heal the atrocities of war. We discuss censorship, the craft of writing, plotting and the research that helps us feel our way into the past. Janet is the ultimate bibliophile. If you love books about books, this is the episode for you.

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.