My interest in the period from just before the Great War, 1914-1918, to the mid-1950’s, when WW2 rationing was finally ended in Britain—almost ten years after VJ Day—began as a childhood curiosity inspired by family stories. I observed my grandfather’s struggles with war wounds sustained during the Battle of the Somme in 1916, and I knew of my mother’s unhappy experiences as wartime evacuee in 1939.  

However, it was not until I was in my late 30’s that I learned about my father’s wartime role as a boy message runner in wartime London.  Of course, I knew he was very light on his feet, but not that he had been plucked from school along with other talented schoolboy sprinters from across the city to run messages for the ARP men (Air Raid Precautions). They had to run even while bombs were falling. The image of my father as a boy, clutching an envelope or a piece of paper and running from place to place as searchlights scanned the sky and Luftwaffe bombers flew overhead remained with me.  Now, years after I first heard that story, it inspired the character of Freddie Hackett, the boy runner who witnesses a murder while running a message for the Secret Service on a moonlit night in wartime London—only to come face to face with the killer—a Frenchman—when he delivers the message.

The police do not believe Freddie when he reports what he has seen, so he goes to the office of a woman to whom he has delivered messages in the past—Maisie Dobbs, psychologist and investigator.  She believes him even when all evidence points to the extreme pressure of his after-school job possibly impacting how he sees his world and everyone in it.

Many of the books I use for research are academic in nature, and I do not necessarily read the book from start to finish, but instead I tend to dip in to find the sections where I will find the specific information I’m seeking.  I very rarely read fiction set in the time period I write about, as I do not want to be influenced by another writer’s creative voice.  However, here are a few books I’ve delved into in preparation for writing The Consequences of Fear.
 

—Jacqueline Winspear

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