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The
Grass Memorial
For years I’d wanted to write a novel set in the Crimean
War, but always been discouraged by other people, who said it would
be too depressing, and that historical novels had had their day
(neither of which was, or is, true). Then I had an idea in which
my Crimean story would be just one strand of three, each set in
a different period – the others being World War Two and the
present. The three central characters are Harry, a young officer
in the Light Brigade; Spencer, an American Mustang pilot flying
out of a small airfield in East Anglia; and Stella, a thoroughly
modern singer-songwriter. The stories are linked in all sorts of
ways, but especially by a place: the Bronze Age white horse at
Uffington, on the Wiltshire/Oxfordshire border. Although novels
are essentially about character, not background, the research for
this one was particularly fascinating. I went to the Crimea and
stood in the North Valley where the infamous charge took place;
I went up in a World War Two Harvard, the plane in which the Mustang
pilots would have trained; I attended a pilots’ reunion in
Dallas; and I travelled to Wyoming to see the place where Spencer
grows up, and the wild horses who inhabit his dreams. This big
book, with its split-sensibility, was another new departure for
me, and it was also the one that started me writing songs. I shan’t
be giving Sir Andrew any sleepless nights, but I do enjoy it!
The title came to me when my partner – now my husband – Patrick
and I walked up the smooth green hill to
see the White Horse for the first time.
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