Writing Historical Fiction: Passing on the Baton

As an author who’s been writing books for children and young adults for the last twenty years, I get asked all sorts of questions.  

Now I’m writing books set in World War Two, the questions have changed a bit from the ones I got asked when I was writing about mermaids and fairies and time travel! 

The top three are about my interest in the period, my influences and inspirations, and how I make a book set eighty years ago feel relevant today.  

As to the first question, I have to make a confession. I’m not really into history. I never have been. At school, it was one of my least favourite subjects and I barely passed the exams. (I scraped an ‘E’ at O level!)  

The thing that intrigues me is never about the facts or dates of history. It started with my desire to explore my own family history and honour my heritage, but the exciting part of writing historical books is,for me, about the people: finding out what drives them, where they find their strength. And that was exactly what I found when I began to write Code Name Kingfisher. 

So to question two. In 2020, I wrote a book that had been close to my heart for many years. When The World Was Ours was inspired by a childhood experience of my dad’s which enabled him and his parents to escape Nazi-occupied Vienna and Czechoslovakia in 1939. In the process of researching this book, I came across a story of two sisters, Truus and Freddie Oversteegen, and their friend Hannie Shaft, who, as teenage girls, had got involved in the Dutch Resistance. I found their story fascinating. I read as much as I could find about them, and soon discovered that there were many others, too: young people who had fought in a secret movement to resist and help thwart the Nazi occupiers of Holland. 

I was blown away by their bravery and realised that I wanted to write a story inspired by these young people. If you read any of my books, you will find strong young people, and these children fitted right in with all the others in my books. Even in my mermaid books, Emily Windsnap is a character who always stands up for others, believes strongly in fairness, and fights prejudice at every turn. (In between dealing with pirates, magical castles and enormous sea monsters!) 

So there was no doubt that these were exactly the kind of characters I wanted to write about. But I didn’t want to just write a history book. I wanted to write a book that young people today could enjoy and relate to.  

Which I guess takes us on to the third, and possibly the most important, part of the question. How do you make a book set during the Second World War feel relevant to young people today?  

One thing about Code Name Kingfisher is that, as well as the storyline set in 1942, there is another one running alongside it, set in the present day. Modern-day Liv has modern-day problems to deal with, and her exploration of her family history is threaded around her own experiences of friendship and bullies at school.  

I hope that, as well as the historical detail, there is enough excitement that keeps the reader wanting to turn the pages. I love a cliff-hanger and I like to think that the story unfolds in a way that makes you want to keep reading ‘just one more chapter’.  

Above all, I think the thing that makes my book relevant for young readers today is actually something that makes me feel sad rather than happy. The fact that the issues in my book aren’tjust about things that happened almost a century ago. War, oppression, prejudice – these issues are as relevant today as they have ever been.  

I’ve often said that whatI’d like the most would be for my book to feel so unthinkable to young people today that they couldn’t even imagine these events ever having taken place.  

Above everything else, the reason I write for young people is because, if we ever get to a world like that, I believe it will be the younger generation who get us there. In writing these books, I am passing a baton on to you. I hope you take better care of it than we have done.  

Read more Bookbuzz author blogs