“By April, the era of trench warfare and stalemate was over. The newspapers did not seem to know where the front line was any more, and all the headlines looked ominous. General Haig had issued an order, saying it was ‘Backs to the Wall’ as the Kaiser’s troops smashed through the exhausted British army and […]Read Post ›
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is far and away the most successful novel set in Guernsey. Although there are easily two dozen works of fiction using the German Occupation of the islands as their background, this is the stand-out commercial hit. Curiously it was written by an American who had only made […]Read Post ›
It is the evening of June 1st, 1917. The Great War has been raging for nearly three years and for the first time in history a Guernsey-badged regiment is about to leave the island. This extract from Glint of Light on Broken Glass contains ‘spoilers’ “Henry Bazin, George, Jack and Edith found themselves a good […]Read Post ›
“My Mum used to tell me so many daft fairy-tales – about this dolmen, or that rock. Every corner of the island seems to come with a silly story that no-one could ever believe.” Yet Edith slowly does come to believe in the supernatural as the world turns dark around her. George Bazin meantime has been obsessed […]Read Post ›
The setting of a novel can be almost a character in itself, such as Cephalonia in Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. Intimate knowledge becomes essential, which is why I worked so hard at getting the feel of Guernsey right in Glint of Light on Broken Glass. You have to live in a place to really ‘get’ it, […]Read Post ›
For a small community, language is part of its identity that sets it apart from the global monoculture. Over 100 novels have been set on the island of Guernsey but most of them miss one of the key features of the island – its language. Glint of Light on Broken Glass is set at a […]Read Post ›
Glint of Light on Broken Glass is set in the Great War, but I did not want to write a ‘war story’. At the Guernsey Literary Festival on 12th May I will be talking about how the war forms the background of the novel. Guernseymen were by long tradition exempt from conscription into the […]Read Post ›
