Motherhood also brought me closer to my parents and grandparents. How inconceivable it would be, to have all that and then lose it! That was the first thing – the beloved child torn away. The years of baby and toddler carrying –that steadily increasing weight the smell of a child’s hair their kissable cheeks. The extraordinary sensory experience of motherhood. What inspired you to focus on these themes? I also explored a wealth of material for the other parts of the story: Britain in the 1930s, the First World War, not to mention the date that Cup-a-Soup first hit the shelves! We Must be Brave deals with a number of poignant themes, such as the fierce love and bond between mother and child, and the great steps we will take to rescue and protect those we love. One of the best archives is WW2 People’s War a vast collection of stories from members of the public on every aspect of the Second World War. Wherever I could, I tracked down personal experience of wartime. What was your research process like when writing the book? How did you ensure that you accurately captured the atmosphere, tension, and destruction of war?

At the same time I had a child of my own, and I reached the age when I started to think about my parents’ and grandparents’ lives. At some point all those remembered images, along with many others, came together for me in a vibrant and interesting fictional landscape, waiting to be peopled. A man chopping wood in the distance, the axe falling silently, and then the sound of the blow coming a second later through cold winter air. The sunlight in a doorway, with a flagstoned path outside. The smell of an old-fashioned stone pantry, such as the one my grandmother had, where she kept stewed apples in a china bowl. when they are reunited decades later, Ellen and Pamela find that their love is as fierce and elemental as it was they day they parted. Ellen tells us a story of loss, but this terrible loss, but it’s actually a story of love. Can you tell us a bit more about the book?Ī motherless child – Pamela – and a childless young woman – Ellen – are thrown together at the beginning of the war, only to are torn apart again at the war’s end. Read our full review of We Must Be Brave here Your new book We Must be Brave is a story of courage and kindness, hardship and friendship. Her first novel, The Game, won a Betty Trask award.

She currently lives in Somerset with her husband and daughter, and runs a summer writing session called Bootcamp. She has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia and studied Arabic at Oxford before travelling to Cairo to work as a translator. Frances Liardet is a child of the children of the Second World War.

Frances liardet author