‘Hinky Dinky Parlay Voo’ : a blend of First World War newspapers, trench songs, and the mud of Flanders in a story about PTSD.
‘Tree of Knowledge’ was set in World War 1 Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq).
A Christmas Birthday: The last 6 Christmas birthdays of his childhood were in wartime. Now it is December 1945 and as Europe begins recovery from WW2 Richard walks with his father to Bristol Temple Meads Station to wait for his mother to come home.
The London Spy‘, about a 1950’s gossip columnist, was inspired by seeing some enamelled advertising signs on the Bluebell Railway, Sussex, and a book ‘Debutantes and the London Season’ by Lucinda Gosling, purchased in the gift shop at Sheffield Park station.
Orange Trees : a radio drama adaptation of an episode for a future novel set mainly during the Algerian War of Independence.
The Eye of the Storm is about a young English scientist working for Hurricane Hunters in Florida in the early 1960s.
‘The Duddingham Line’, on railway closures and the people who opposed them.
Mulcahy and Rivers – A detective story set in 1970s Ireland.
Lucky Sixpence set in the 1970s is about a child who finds a lucky sixpence on the pavement. Lucy’s find brings a little relief into her deprived inner-city life. But when she gives it away to a traveller will her luck hold out?
Optical Illusions, inspired by the Stasi museum in Berlin. A couple brought together by the Stasi: but after the Wende in 1990, she is free to research her history.
To London by Train grew from a prompt from my local writing group: they beamed with excitement which revived my memories of childhood trips from Reading General to Paddington. Other than the train journey the story is pure fiction.
©M Wallis 2020