5 fantastic books inspired by true stories

A few years ago, I was given a book by the team from an independent bookshop not far from me, which is sadly no longer around.

They knew that I was a Girlguiding leader, and gave me a copy of How the Girl Guides Won the War, by Janie Hampton. It’s such a fascinating book, I loved it – and half a page from the chapters on the First World War stayed lurking at the back of my mind.

I had never known that MI5 (MO5 at the time) employed Guides to run messages – as well as disinfecting telephones and filling up ink wells! The Guides were so reliable that at the end of the war they were taken to Versailles to be messengers at the peace conference. Such sensible, well-behaved girls… 

I love books that start from a little seed of something real – and then grow into a whole new story. These are a few of my favourites. 

I was so excited to read this novel about the invasion of Belgium and the early part of the First World War, as I’d just been researching the same period for A Girl’s Guide to Spying, and I loved Coram Boy by Jamila Gavin.

Indian soldiers have been left out of this story for so long. Jamila Gavin weaves together three Belgian children, a teenage German cavalryman, and a Pathan, a Muslim soldier fighting as part of the British army. 

They are abandoned under the sheltering branches of a walnut tree on the edge of a little Belgian village, a place that for a short moment is vital to the progress of the war. 

When I was a very junior editor at Scholastic Children’s Books (a long time ago), one of my jobs was anglicising the Animorphs books by KA Applegate. 

They were truly random, particularly as the series went on, but I actually really enjoyed them. KA Applegate’s more recent books have the same intense interest in animal behaviour, but here the voice of Ivan, the silverback gorilla imprisoned in a circus-themed mall, is both funny and heartbreaking. 

This book was inspired by the real Ivan, and the campaign to save him.  

Phil Earle was inspired by the story of a friend’s father who was part of the Home Guard. It was his job to guard the lion cage at Manchester Zoo, in case an air raid destroyed the cage and freed the lion – and then he had to shoot it.

Again, the relationship between humans and a gorilla is key to this fabulous story. Choosing two gorilla books wasn’t a conscious plan! I had been reading about the keepers at London Zoo who had to decide on sending different animals to the country as war approached, or simply putting some of them down (all the venomous snakes), and this book makes those choices devastating. 

It’s also one of the most terrifying stories of wartime on the home front that I’ve read. 

At first sight this isn’t obviously a book based on true events, given it features a wonderfully eerie sea monster, controlled by a cabal of London merchants. 

However, it’s inspired by the real children who sold broadsheets on the streets of London, as well as the dismal history of the Fleet prison for debtors. It’s fabulously atmospheric as well as a gripping mystery. 

This is the fascinating semi-autobiographical story of a family’s escape from Germany in the 1930s, as their father is wanted by the Nazis. 

I came across it aged about nine, and what I mostly remembered from that first reading was that Anna managed to pass her school exams despite her terrible sewing by being very good at standing on one leg. It seemed wonderfully irrational, and I loved it. 

I’ve gone back to this book so many times since, it’s the most personal, poignant adventure story.