The Second World War the way a child actually met it — not on a map, but through the family wireless in the corner: the dial's amber glow, a voice that might be true or might be a lie. Thirteen countries, thirteen windows, and always kept hope.
Written or in the works — not published yet, so there is nothing to click. The list tells you when each one lands.
Edie Fletcher is ten years old when the war sends her away — a London girl put on a train with a label round her neck and evacuated to a Devon farm…
Tom Pengelly is the farm boy Edie is billeted alongside — first her rival, all "vacky" taunts and turned shoulders, then her closest ally and the…
Vera Fletcher is Edie's mother — the steady heart of the Bethnal Green house and the voice in the letters that reach Edie in Devon. Hers is the…
Bill Fletcher is Edie's father — an East-End dockman who signs on with the merchant navy and sails the Atlantic convoys through the war. Mostly he is…
Hettie is the Pengelly farm's most disagreeable hen — big, rusty, bad-tempered, and nobody's friend, and the bird that pecks Edie the moment she…
Joan Pengelly is Tom's older sister, on the edge of grown-up when Edie arrives — a careful politeness that keeps a newcomer at arm's length. As the…
Mr Pengelly is the farmer who takes Edie in — large, undemonstrative, and kinder than a wary London girl first knows how to trust. He carries her…
Mrs Hooper is Vera's neighbour and friend in Bethnal Green — the Fletchers' London anchor, all sharp opinions and sharper kindness. She and Vera see…
Mrs Pengelly is Edie's billet host — the gruff, fair, unsentimental Devon farm wife who is the hardest person in the room to fool and the one who…
The Pengelly farm in Devon is where the war sends Edie — a real working farm of livestock and seasons and make-do, and the alien world she has to…
Number twelve, Bethnal Green, is the home Edie is sent away from — a mid-terrace house on a close-packed East-End street, with its Saturday market…
London is the city Edie measures the whole war by, though for most of the story she is nowhere near it. Her borough named in the BBC's level voice…
The front-door key to number twelve is the little iron heart of Edie's whole story. Her father pressed it into her hand the summer before she was…
The wireless is the warm amber heart of The Wireless War — the family radio that carries the whole enormous war into one small room, at a child's…
The flat-whistling kettle is a small, battered hero of the London kitchen — knocked out of tune one hard night in the Blitz and kept anyway, dents…
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