I am thrilled to join the other bloggers as part of The Beauty Chorus blog tour and I have an exclusive guest post by the author Kate Lord Brown.
SYNOPSIS: New Year’s Eve 1940: Evie Chase, the beautiful debutante daughter of an RAF commander, listens wistfully to the swing music drifting out from the ballroom.
With bombs falling nightly in London, she is determined to make a difference to the war effort. Evie joins the ATA – the civilian pilots who ferry fighter planes to bases across war-torn Britain.
Two other women wait nervously to join up with her – Stella Grainger, a forlorn young mother from Singapore, and Megan Jones, an idealistic teenager who has never left her Welsh village before.
Billeted together in a tiny cottage, Stella, Megan and Evie learn to live and work together as they find romance, confront loss and forge friendships that last a lifetime.
AUTHOR:
Kate Lord Brown grew up in a wild and beautiful part of Devon. She read Philosophy at Durham and Art History at the Courtauld Institute and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, curating collections for palaces and embassies in Europe and the Middle East. Kate has travelled and lived around the world with her airline pilot husband and gained a MA in creative writing from the Manchester Writing School MMU. She was a finalist in the ITV People's Author contest 2009, and her international bestseller The Perfume Garden was shortlisted for the UK Romantic Novel of the Year 2014. Kate currently lives in the Middle East with her family, and she was a regional winner in this year's BBC International Radio Playwriting Competition.
GUEST POST:
It is an absolute pleasure to have Kate Lord Brown discussing her childhood living in Devon and the influences it has had on her own writing. Having moved to Somerset in the last few years and having wonderful memories of childhood holidays in Devon I was intrigued to find out how Kate's early years living in the beautiful West Country have influenced her as a writer. Here is what Kate had to say:
Devon Childhood
Devon resident Agatha Christie said "One of the luckiest things that can happen to you in life is, I think, to have a happy childhood." I grew up in a wild and beautiful part of the county, the highest point between Dartmoor and Exmoor. It's a beautiful part of the world, full of myth and magic - hidden valleys, secret coves and beaches, austere moors, winters full of snow and summers that seem to last forever. It's the only county with two coastlines, and lots of my childhood memories are tied up with swimming and surfing.
We lived in an isolated village, and as children had the run of Stoodleigh Court's grounds. There was a lot of freedom and it was a great place to be an imaginative child! In the orchard every summer, Dad would harvest the hay and build us a playhouse made of bales. That is my earliest memory, sitting beneath the old oak tree in the orchard aged two or three, with red Mary-Jane shoes on, reading a book. I read everything I could get my hands on - all of Agatha Christie, P G Wodehouse, then later Jilly Cooper and the big 80s blockbusters like The Thorn Birds and Woman of Substance. It inspired me to start writing and I always kept journals, and wrote stories and plays for friends to perform.
There was a real sense of community in the village and the reality of the 70s - a world of petrol crisis, three day weeks, terrorism and the Cold War threat felt very distant. It was simply a grand adventure to be in a place where you could play and explore for a whole day, bicycling the lanes or horse riding across the moors - it's a freedom I don't think kids have now. There was a magic to it - I remember rhododendrons which grew so wild and large that their hollow hearts became dens and hideaways. There were a lot of parties, too - my Mum was the church organist and there always seemed to be music and someone singing. It was amazing how the old ladies of the church choir could belt out the show tunes like Jerome Kern's 'Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, I gotta love one man til I die … Can't help loving that man of mine ...'
Charles Dickens described Devon as 'this most beautiful of English Counties', and it has inspired countless writers from Agatha Christie to Mary Wesley. Growing up in that landscape has left an indelible mark on my writing, and I think it's there in the sense of nature and place you find in 'The Beauty Chorus', in the seasons changing. I've recently moved back after thirty years living overseas, and lockdown is certainly giving me a chance to stop and appreciate how beautiful this place is. As Christie said, I feel lucky.
Thank you so much to Kate for her wonderful guest post. I also feel truly lucky living in the West Country having moved here from the bustling South East of England. Her childhood is exactly what I crave for my own daughter and although times have changed I can honestly say there is still a sense of freedom, community and the magical outdoors which inspires me everyday. I wouldn't want to be living anywhere else.
Many thanks to Amber Choudhary at Midas PR for inviting me on the blog tour.