F Gillard

The last book in the series charting the life and times of a mid twentieth century couple has just been released, in time for the 70th anniversary of VJ Day when the end of the war against Japan officially ended.

Before the Show is the diary of a young officer in India and Burma awaiting a useful role in this theatre of war. The story continues where his diaries end and gives an account of the fate of his unit, and the rather curious unit he joined in1945 to issue propaganda. The book contains an index of many names and description of men and places encountered.

Wanted on Voyage, Vol 1 of Love Letters Crossing Continents was written by my parents, now dead. I am privileged to have possession of such personal material, and be able to share them with a wider audience. As part of this project, I was also able to learn more about my father's history, through his war diary, written in India and Burma during WW2.

In 2012 I was lucky enough to be able to travel extensively in India, and visited my mother's birthplace, and the place where the two young people met in Lucknow, and also Kolkata and Delhi where they spent their weekends before and after their marriage. The distances they travelled was extraordinary even in a time of war. I also found a copy of the engagement notice in the Statesman of India paper of 1945 and pictures painted by my mothers ex-boyfriend in the same brown decaying newspaper. I was able to find the date quite easily in the archive in Kolkata as she mentions the date in one of the letters in the book.

In Mussoorie where my mother was born, I was able to ride a horse down Happy Valley, as she had done 65 years earlier and see some of the same shops which hadn't changed much. The school is still there, and one of the roads is named after my grandfather. It was strange to look round the house where my family lived for many years and look out from the hills to the plain below.

For the next part of the book, when my father goes to Sudan in the Political Service, I found a small number of photos, plus a small collection of documents he wrote, held by the University of Durham. The life they led there is really only revealed through these letters and in the next volume just published on Kindle, A Marriage Built on Paper.