The author K J Millard, reflects on her influences and inspiration for her new book,
'Charlie and the Spitfire', published this week, by the Bruges Group.
I can thank Miss Jones for becoming a teacher – a woman whom I never met, but a woman who, nevertheless, had a profound influence on my life and who, arguably, changed the course of my grandmother's life forever.
My grandmother, one of four siblings, grew up the 1920's and 30's in a poor Brighton family. When still only very little, they were abandoned by their mother. One day, she sat her four young children on the bed, gave them a jam sandwich each, walked out the door and was never seen again. It left an indelible mark on my grandmother, a pain that was never fully healed. In the days before the welfare state, her father, left to bring up four young children by himself, had no option, but to put them into foster care, so that he could go out and earn enough money to feed them.
Love was in short supply. Her father, a very kind, gentle man, whom my grandmother loved with all her heart to the end of her days, loved her dearly, but was not able to be the father in those early days, that he would have liked to have been.
My grandmother, disregarded by her teachers, sought in vain for a figure to whom she could look up and who could guide her life choices.
That figure was Miss Jones, an English teacher in a small Yorkshire town, where my grandmother was evacuated, who gave her a love of literature, words and poetry, poetry which my grandmother was still able to recite even at the end of her life, when the ravages of dementia had razed most other memories from her poor, beautiful mind.
When I was little, she and I would write stories and poetry together, something which imprinted in me a love of words and well-crafted language and it was one of the proudest moments of her life when I became an English teacher. "You're my Miss Jones," she used to say.
Miss Jones, a woman, a teacher, an educator of children, whom I never met, was the only person to see something in my grandmother and to dedicate time and energy imparting her own love of words and poetry to her. Little did Miss Jones know, what a profound influence she would have down the generations and arguably, continues to have through me. I have been an English teacher for nearly twenty-eight years in the state sector and now, latterly, in a specialist dyslexia school, where I am also the Reading Co-ordinator. For me, the joyful challenge is to encourage the children to believe that reading can be fun and not an effortful process doomed to failure, which is why it was so important to me to make my book, 'Charlie and the Spitfire', published this week, in time for VE Day, as dyslexia friendly as possible, both in content and presentation, and it is down to my grandmother and my grandfather, who I used to call, Jam-Jar, that 'Charlie and the Spitfire' exists at all.
The stories of the war they used to share with me became indelibly printed on my mind, to the point that it felt like those memories were my memories, reinforced by the Sunday afternoon black and white war films, always shown on television after lunches up and down the country, in the days before Sunday trading and extended pub opening hours.
Stories of the miracle of Dunkirk, how the sea remained calm just long enough to allow three-hundred thousand men to be evacuated, the courage of ordinary people who took their own Little Ships over to the devastation of the beaches of Dunkirk to ferry 'our boys' home; stories of the bravery of the Battle of Britain, the terror of the Blitz, the Arctic Convoys, on which my grandfather served, sailing on cold and dangerous seas, the courage and stoicism of the people of Malta, the tumultuous beaches of D-Day itself, all these stories were lovingly repeated to me, along with personal stories of the war.
It was when my son was little, that I realised these stories and this information did not swirl around in the foreground of his mind as they had in mine when I was his age and I felt it was necessary to find a way to present that information to him in a manner that would be accessible for children. It was a beautiful spring day in early May, fourteen years ago, when the first line of the book came to my mind, a simple opening with my son playing in our local park with his father when a Spitfire flies overhead, but gradually the book morphed and grew as more stories, like the sword of Gryffindor, presented themselves to me and demanded to be included within its pages. A documentary would come on, just as I was writing or about to write a particular section and provide me with the information I did not know I needed. Strange synchronicities would occur, unusual co-incidences – one such being when having just written a section about a spectral army landing on the beaches of D-Day, with HMS Victory leading the way, with the message, 'England expects that every man will do his duty' streaming above it, I discovered that the captain of one HMS Erebus, which was at the vanguard of the actual D-Day landings, had ordered that this very message be displayed.
My greatest inspiration was my grandfather, my Jam-Jar, the most gentle and kindest of men, who had served on the Russian convoys during the war. He and I were very close; we were the best of friends and when he died, he left a huge hole in the hearts of all my family and my book was a way of bringing him back to life, a way of spending a few more precious hours with him and a way for my son, who was born long after my grandfather had died, to meet Jam-Jar and to get to know him as I knew him. There are two photos of him, which sit on the shelf at home, one of him as a young man and one as an older man with me sitting with him. Both photographs are in my book and it is the older Jam-Jar, whom my son meets in the story, when he goes back in time one spring day to Brighton beach. The first thing Charlie sees are large, strong hands resting on the balustrade of the promenade, his gaze then drawn to the gentlest of faces and the kindest of eyes and a warm smile which 'spoke a thousand words.'
So, their journey begins, visiting and seeing for themselves the most significant events of the Second World War, events in which the Spitfire played such an important role. I personally have always loved Spitfires – never failing to bring a tear to my eye when I see one flying overhead. It must be something about the Rolls Royce Merlin engines – the beauty and power of the sound, the iconic design, its speed and agility – a thing of true beauty, which was instrumental in the successful outcome of the war. I had to have Charlie flying in a Spitfire and at some moments actually flying it himself. It just had to happen.
Something else which had to happen, was to make Churchill and King George VI pivotal figures in the novel, as they were in real life. Churchill imbued the nation with a feeling, a feeling which awakened a spirit in the national psyche, a spirit embodied by the King. Both of these figures, swirl in and out of the story, at times morphing with other mythical kings to weave a magic within the book as the land, Aslan-like, awakens and answers the call.
This was my deepest wish, to ignite my son's imagination and curiosity. I wanted the book to be as impactful as possible, but as close to historical fact and detail, as I could make it without running the risk of being boring and overloaded with too much information.
This evening, as I stand in our local park, watching the beacon being lit to commemorate the 80th anniversary of VE Day, with the moon, impassive in the peaceful sky, I am minded of the beacons lit from Plymouth Hoe to London, as a message of strength and defiance, alerting the capital and Queen Elizabeth 1 of the imminent, ultimately unsuccessful attack by the Spanish Armada and the house in the park where we stand tonight, the old home of her admiral, Lord Howard of Effingham, a house where much later, Winston Churchill visited. I then look up to the hills on the other side of town, to the site where nine American young men lost their lives in a B17 Flying Fortress in March 1945; how many people still remember these stories? I look around and count the people present at the lighting of this beacon, far fewer than were present at the commemorations to mark the hundredth anniversary of the end of the First World War. How many will bother to remember the hundredth anniversary of the end of the Second World War? Already the numbers are dwindling.
This is why it is so important to keep these stories alive, the memories alive, the sense of pride alive and in some small way, I hope my book does just this.
