Michael Stewart
Back in March of this year Jeremy Vine had Michael Morpurgo read out a letter from another of his listeners on the popular UK Radio 2 show. It concerned an elderly lady who was in a hospice, dying. The gentleman who wrote the account was I believe working in the hospice and met the lady. The lady opened up to the listener and was telling him the stories from her youth, during the First World War. I recall it being an extremely moving tale of the loss of her love and it was very well read by Michael Morpurgo. I recall at the time that I was really quite moved and just couldn’t get the story out of my mind.
I just knew there was a real story there. Jeremy Vine’s show inspired me to write my debut novel which is based loosely around the life of an elderly woman who is dying in a hospice and recounts the tale of the loss of her one and only love during the First World War to a hospice helper. I then managed to weave that story into a wider story of one soldier’s evacuation from the western front in 1918, which was based around the real events of my own Great Grandfather’s exploits at that time which I had also been investigating over the previous three years.
I just knew there was a real story there. Jeremy Vine’s show inspired me to write my debut novel which is based loosely around the life of an elderly woman who is dying in a hospice and recounts the tale of the loss of her one and only love during the First World War to a hospice helper. I then managed to weave that story into a wider story of one soldier’s evacuation from the western front in 1918, which was based around the real events of my own Great Grandfather’s exploits at that time which I had also been investigating over the previous three years.
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