The Inspiration of Readers by Juliet Greenwood

I’ve just come back from my second year at NorthwichLitfest, giving a talk about the role of women in the First World War at Sandiway Library, part of Cheshire West and Chester Libraries.

Juliet Greenwood (left) with 
Northwich LitFest Organiser,
Susi Osborne
(Photo copyright: Paula Jackson)

Despite the extreme heat, I’ve returned energised and enthused, all ready to knuckle down and get back to my next book, with a reminder of just how much I love going out and meeting readers. It’s so easy in my little office, tucked away on a Welsh mountainside, working to deadlines and the (sometimes) tortuous refining of a story into its final form, to get completely lost in my own world. You do need that to get a book done, but it’s easy to forget that readers have their input too.

I find coming face-to-face with readers is a great reminder that a book is always a two-way thing, with both the reader and the writer bringing their life-experience, passion and imagination to create the final form, with (hopefully) mutual respect. It’s the scary, but exciting, bit when the final version of the manuscript leaves the writer’s desk (or rather your email), and sails off into the ether, to take on a life of its own, out of your control. The final letting go. It’s also a reminder of why I fell in love with reading in the first place.

We That Are Left
Juliet Greenwood

My evening with the enthusiastic readers at Sandiway Library was no exception. At the end of my talk on my research into the many roles of women in WW1 for We That are Left, which ranged from nursing in French villages as bombs fell, to acting as spies, and leading men separated from their regiments over the Alps to safety, one of the questions was about the trenches. This was something I’d agonised over while writing the book, and it was a very clear decision not to go there. It was strange going back to those deliberations after several years, and trying to explain my reasons – and that they weren’t about me being a soppy female and not wanting to face anything nasty!

The thing is, the trenches are so horrific they overshadow everything else within a story. While, as a woman writing about war, I’d wanted to concentrate on women’s different roles in the conflict, which have been largely forgotten, but played such a part in changing both the way women were perceived, and also how they perceived themselves. At the same time, I also wanted to focus on the issue of male trauma and the long-term impact of (then completely unrecognised) Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. My wonderful audience got this immediately, and the subsequent discussion brought up so many stories of traumatised soldiers from both world wars, as well as more recent conflicts. It was a truly moving experience.

Thinking about it afterwards, I realised how much that discussion had helped dispel my own wobbles over the last few years about my decision to concentrate on that side of conflict, as well as the optimism and resilience of the human spirit under the most terrible of circumstances. When a book goes out into the world, and nothing can be changed, it’s so easy to have doubts, especially when coming at a subject from a slightly more unusual angle, which leaves you vulnerable to criticism.

So, thank you to my wonderful audience, who gave me so much during our evening together. I’ve been buzzing ever since, and I’m already looking forward to meeting up again next year. Of course, we did end up coming back to my passion for the Suffragists, and my ultimate heroine, Millicent Fawcett (I can’t wait to see her statue), but that’s another story…

Links:

Northwich LitFest

Juliet Greenwood 

Juliet Greenwood is a UK historical novelist published by Honno Press. Her books are set in Cornwall, London and Wales in Victorian and Edwardian times, and follow the lives of independently-minded women struggling to find freedom and self-fulfilment.

Her latest novel is The White Camellia, based in the Suffrage movement led by Millicent Fawcett. Juliet's two previous historical novels have reached #4 and #5 in the UK Amazon Kindle store. Eden’s Garden was a finalist for ‘The People’s Book Prize’. We That are Left was completed with a Literature Wales Writers’ Bursary, and was Welsh Book of the Month for Waterstones Wales, The Welsh Books Council and the National Museum of Wales. It was also chosen by the ‘Country Wives’ website as one of their top ten ‘riveting reads’ of 2014, was one of the top ten reads of the year for the ‘Word by Word’ blog, and a Netmums 'Top Summer Read' for 2014.

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We That Are Left

by Juliet Greenwood

Elin lives a luxurious but lonely life at Hiram Hall. Her husband Hugo loves her but he has never recovered from the Boer War. Now another war threatens to destroy everything she knows.

With Hugo at the front, and her cousin Alice and friend Mouse working for the war effort, Elin has to learn to run the estate in Cornwall, growing much needed food, sharing her mother's recipes and making new friends – and enemies. But when Mouse is in danger, Elin must face up to the horrors in France herself.

And when the Great War is finally over, Elin's battles prove to have only just begun.

Structural Edits for the Faint-Hearted by Juliet Greenwood

When I first started writing, it was simple. Write book. Go back over it, fiddling and twiddling, and perfecting those beautifully-crafted sentences. Check spelling. Send the finished masterpiece out into a breathlessly waiting world.

It wasn’t until I began to work with an editor that I realised why the world hadn’t been breathlessly waiting. Basically (and to be brutally honest) I hadn’t even started to write the book. I’d got a first draft, and it didn’t matter how much I fiddled at the edges, it was never going to make it past the first draft, before sailing into oblivion and my bottom drawer for all eternity.

I should have known. After all, I’d been successfully writing short stories for years, bashing them around and tearing them apart until they worked. The trouble with a book is that it’s so big, so unwieldy, and takes so long, and so much emotional energy, to write, that the thought of tearing it up and starting again is beyond depressing – especially if, like most of us, you are also trying to do the day job, run a home and family. Oh, and a life.

But, in the end, a long, cold hard look that finished masterpiece (ahem) is the only way to go. That was what I learnt with my first book for Honno Press, Eden’s Garden, and it’s a process that I’ve been learning ever since. The hardest thing is to step back from this world you have been passionately living in for months, even years, and put on the cold, hard, practical, head. But your reader will read the same thing in days, or even non-stop over hours, and they don’t have that world living in their own heads and their hearts, so you have to capture them and persuade them, and transfer that magic inside them. Ballet looks effortless, too.

That is what structural edits are about. It’s taking your book out of your head to hold it in your hands and look at it dispassionately to see what is working and what is not. It’s when you use all the skills you’ve learnt from reading books and knowing what makes you keep on reading or throwing it against the wall. Are there too many characters? Is the heroine a wimp, who throws a strop at the slightest excuse, or a doormat to all and sundry? Are there enough holes in the plot to swallow the Titanic? Everything is thrown into the air, and anything can be thrown out (however beautifully crafted, however long it has taken to write) to make the book as gripping and emotionally engaging as you want it to be – in other words, the story that lives in your head. None of this is destructive. It can feel brutal, but it’s the paring down of a book into the best it can be. It’s the painter going through version after version of the same subject, the dancer practising until their feet bleed.

Above all, you need to listen to your gut. When I sent in the first version of Eden’s Garden, I knew something wasn’t working. Deep inside I knew the Victorian element of the story needed to be far more vivid by being told in the voice of the Victorian heroine. I felt defeated by starting again, rewriting a whole new element of the book, and unceremoniously chucking out hours of work. And, to be honest, I thought I didn’t have the skill and was afraid of making a fool of myself. It was an editor who taught me that yes, it was a vital part of making the book work – and yes, I was capable of writing it. The story didn’t change, but that simple structural change made the book come alive. It was definitely worth it, and I learnt so much about writing, and the kind of writer I want to be, in the process.

I still made mistakes in my latest book, but not nearly as many, and most I spotted along the way. Writing is, after all, a process of constantly learning, developing and improving. And, at the end of writing The White Camellia, understanding how much I had learnt and developed as a writer was the greatest buzz of all.

Structural edits? Feel the fear and do it anyway. You’ve nothing to lose and everything to gain. Bring ’em on!

Juliet Greenwood is published by Honno Press. Her books are set in Cornwall, London and Wales in Victorian and Edwardian times, and follow the lives of strong, independently-minded women struggling to find freedom and self-fulfillment. Her novels have reached #4 and #5 in the UK Amazon Kindle store, while Eden’s Garden was a finalist for ‘The People’s Book Prize’. We That are Left was completed with a Literature Wales Writers’ Bursary.

Juliet’s great grandmother worked as a nail maker in Lye Waste, near Birmingham in the Black Country, hammering nails while rocking the cradle with her foot. Juliet’s grandmother worked her way up to become a cook in a big country house. Their stories have left Juliet with a passion for history, and in particular for the experiences of women, so often overlooked or forgotten. Juliet lives in a traditional cottage in Snowdonia, in the UK, and loves gardening and walking. 

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Readers and Passion (what I learnt from Tenby Book Fair) by Juliet Greenwood

This year I finally made it to the Tenby Book Fair, organised by fellow Honno author, Judith Barrow. As it was a first, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but it turned out to be a completely inspiring weekend in many ways, and one that will stay with me for a long time.

Tenby itself was colourful and relaxed, with long beaches and dramatic coastline, while from the window of my B&B I looked right out over Caldey Island. It was such a whirl of a weekend, it was impossible to go and explore very much, apart from wandering through the narrow streets within the medieval walls of the town, so one lesson was to make sure I go back to find out more and do plenty of exploring. I’m planning already!

Evening in Tenby
Overlooking Caldey Island

The Book Fair itself, on the first day of the Tenby Arts Festival, was busy from start to finish. There were around fifteen authors, so it was a delight to catch up with old friends and meet many new. In many ways it felt like an extension of the Novelistas, a chance to exchange ideas and experiences, and to support each other. Authors are wonderfully supportive of each other, and the buzz in the room was energising and inspiring.

With fellow Honno authors:
Hilary Shepherd, Judith Barrow, Thorne Moore (right)
and my wonderful editor, Janet Thomas (centre)

At the same time there was a chance to talk face-to-face with readers, which I also loved. Sometimes, beavering away for months on end on a book and a subject that fills you with passion, you have to ask yourself is this just me? Am I fooling myself? Is this simply a self-indulgence? Is anyone ever going to read this dratted tome that has taken over a year of my life? Especially when bombarded with advice on what the agents and major publishers are looking for, and what sells. So it was a great adrenalin rush, and I wanted to cheer several times that day, as my chats about Eden’s Garden and We That are Left flowed naturally into the suffragists and the suffragettes, and the long struggle for women to have a legal existence, a right to control their own lives, earn money and follow a profession. The subject which happens to be the background to my next novel with Honno Press, and which is out next year.

Talking to the women and men who passed my stall made me fall back in love with the new book all over again. Bashing away at a novel takes so long, it’s easy to lose sight of why you thought it was a good idea in the first place. Talking to readers reminded me of the initial spark for the story, and that I was so cross the long history of the suffrage movement, and the women who fought peacefully for decades to improve the lives of women and children, has (like so much of women’s history) been pushed aside and forgotten, and overshadowed by the final, brief, violence of the suffragettes. Talking to readers helped me regain my energy, and my confidence that yes, it is a subject women find fascinating, and still resonates today.

My stall, set up and ready!

I’m glad I made it to the Tenby Book Fair this year. I discovered a new part of the country, and it fired me up to keep on getting out from behind my desk and meet more readers. So thank you, wonderful readers, for reminding me of the reasons to write from the heart, rather than what I think someone somewhere just might be looking for – and probably isn’t anymore anyhow.

Talking to readers and fellow writers helped restore my confidence in myself, and where I am going. And I’m already looking forward to next year in Tenby – this time proudly holding a new brand new book, hot off the press, in my hands, all ready for plenty more passionate conversations!

Tenby in the morning

Finding Your Point of View by Juliet Greenwood

Now that I am well into my next book, I’m facing the same dilemma as in all my previous stories. I have all these characters (some of whom have appeared out of nowhere, quite of their own accord, if you please) clamouring to be heard. Which point of view should I follow? And when? It’s a tricky one, an aspect that can change the entire flavour of the book, if not dictate what kind of book it is going to be.

In ‘We That are Left’ the choice was simple. I knew from the start that I wanted this story to be the First World War seen through the eyes of one woman, and therefore it was always going to be Elin’s voice telling the story. But even that had its doubts at times. There was a brief wavering at one point at whether there should be Mouse’s voice, in letters or in a point of view, contrasting the civilians’ experience at home with that of those working amongst the battlefields. My instinct was almost immediately that it would be a mistake. The horrors of the trenches are so overwhelming I felt certain they would overtake the less dramatic griefs and horrors of the civilians. Besides, seeing through one individual’s eyes doesn’t necessarily mean avoiding or shutting out the horrors and injustices, even if they are beyond the understanding of the protagonist. Just think of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’.

In my previous book for Honno, ‘Eden’s Garden’ I had two points of view: two women living a hundred years apart. That had its own complexities – who should speak when, how much should they reveal? How much would the reader guess before I wanted them to? And as for keeping the balance between the two… But although the final drafts drove me mad at times, I know it was the right decision, because in my original draft the point of view was that of Carys, the contemporary heroine, as she unravelled a mystery. I was constantly struggling with something being not quite right, and I can still remember vividly the thunderbolt when Ann, the voice from the past, began to speak. That was when I could finally feel the story coming alive and just knew I had to go with it.

And so what of my current dilemma? Well, instead of beating my head against a brick wall, and trying to round up my characters into their allotted places, I have decided to let them get on with it for now. This time I have gained enough experience to know that I can always prune out the bits I don’t want. After all, they’ll all still have their point of view, even if it’s not expressed, so it will never be a waste, even if some of them end up in another book at the end of it all.

Meanwhile, we’ll wrestle it out together, experimenting, seeing what works, going off on a tangent every now and again. This is the bit no one will ever see, so it doesn’t matter if a character changes age or hair colour – or even gender, come to that. It’s having them all there, with all their potential, that counts. It’s once the story is assembled that I can stand back, look at them long and hard and gently, but firmly, put them in their place. With a large helping of ruthless pruning, of course.

Now where did I put my shears …

How I Became a Bestseller on Kindle by Juliet Greenwood

When I heard, several weeks ago, that We That are Left was going to be a 99p Kindle Daily Deal, I never imagined for one moment that it would get into the top 100, let alone to the dizzy heights of number #4 in the Kindle store.

We That are Left

At first I told myself there was nothing I could do to prepare. I couldn’t tell anyone until the day itself, and it was just one day. I’m with a small press, the incomparable Honno Press, and I’m not a big name. Besides, like most writers, trying to balance the day job, writing, editing and promotion (plus a life) means that choices have to be made.

But no one ever got anywhere by looking a gift horse in the mouth. So I took the risk, put everything else on the back burner for a couple of weeks, and went for it. I’m so glad I did.

Preparation

Juliet Greenwood

I couldn’t publicise the Daily Deal in advance, so I focussed on upping my profile. I increased my number of blog posts during those weeks, both on my own blog and on that of the wonderful and supportive Novelistas Ink, and publicised them as much as I could on Facebook and Twitter. Twitter is an amazingly supportive place. I made a real effort to use it more efficiently, following people back, tweeting blog posts, and retweeting publicity. Along the way, I grew my numbers of followers and learnt so much about really interacting, instead of just popping in now and again – plus I met some great people and made new friends along the way!

The day itself

I had decided to set aside the whole day to focus on networking and publicity. Which was just as well, as it turned out, because apart from a short dog walk and a few cups of tea in the sun, it was nonstop all day. I put a blog post publicising the deal at around 6.30am, and hit the social networks. It’s no good just shouting ‘buy me!’, so much of the time was the usual tweeting of information and other people’s blogs, and lots of retweeting, interspersed with a quick wave.

#2 in Sagas (Amazon UK)

It was all quite sedate for a while. I didn’t realise (until fellow Novelista Louise Marley told me) that it takes a few hours for Amazon’s figures to show, and what I was actually looking at were sales figures from several hours before. It was great being in the top 500, and definitely higher than I had ever been. There was just a small niggle that was thinking of all that work I’d put in over the past weeks, but I told myself to be philosophical. I was nervously looking at the figures, holding my breath and taking screen shots (work out how to do them before the day!) as a record.

Just before lunchtime I found one of my screenshots was blurred and dived back in without thinking. And there it was. We That Are Left had jumped to #61 in the Kindle store. Top 100. (Luckily I have very understanding neighbours, who nod sagely at the odd wild squeal and don’t call the men in white coats.) That’s when I knew all that work had paid off, and from that point on, until I finally collapsed at midnight when the promotion ended, it was one rollercoaster of a ride, up to number 2 in three saga categories, and number 4 in the overall Kindle store. Still pinching myself.

#4 in the Bestseller Chart (Amazon UK)

What have I learnt? That writers are the most generous and supportive bunch on the planet. That social networking really does work. Facebook and Twitter are amazingly supportive. That all the blog posts I’ve done over the past six months also helped to make the book familiar: I’ve done it myself, remembered a post and a cover of an author I don’t know and thought ‘that sounds interesting’, but done nothing about it until it appears in a charity shop or at 99p! That it is possible to get to #4 in the Amazon charts with a small publisher.

Top Tips:

1. Do your preparation – network, blog, make yourself as visible as can be. Keep on doing it - you never know when the chance might come your way.
2. Support other authors. Not just before you need them, but all the time. We’re all in this together.
3. Love your readers. They are your best advocates, and hopefully feel just as passionately about your book as you do.
4. Set aside the day. It’s a promotional opportunity, make the most of it. It’s only one day. The sun will be there tomorrow.
5. Be prepared for things to happen both slowly and very fast.
6. Take screen shots each time there’s a change, it might be your only chance! I made a folder on my desktop, so I could label each one and shove it in there out of the way until I had time to sort them out.
7. Share your excitement. I loved sharing the journey with my Twitter and Facebook friends, it was part of the blast, and it definitely helped to spread the buzz.
8. Forget about healthy eating, head for the chocolate. I was a nervous wreck by lunchtime, in need of the hard stuff (i.e. sugar).
9. Write the best book you can, straight from the heart. Listen to what your editor tells you, however much you want to sulk. She’s right. And if you believe passionately in your book, it’s not just about me, me, me, it’s about the book. You’ll fight to the ends of the earth to get your baby out there to take her place in the sun - and believe it or not, that’s catching.
10. Whatever happens, it’s only a day. Who knows what might happen tomorrow? Enjoy!
    

My WW1 Garden by Juliet Greenwood

This year, I’ve loved seeing the gardens commemorating WW1 at the Chelsea Flower show.

Having read newspaper reports from the time, and lived so long in a WW1 kitchen garden in my head, it was touching to see them in all their Chelsea glory. I loved the whistles that became fountains, and the stories of the men interned in Germany creating flower gardens, with even their own strictly-judged show.

My favourite of all was the potter’s garden.

With its cottage garden flowers and path of discarded pots, it caught a real sense of the potter having left everything to volunteer, as so many men did in the first year of the war, unable to imagine the unprecedented horrors they would soon be facing, and many never to return. It had the same atmosphere as the Lost Gardens of Heligan, that first sparked my fascination with the gardens of WW1, abandoned at the moment the intricate hierarchy of gardeners left for the front, and generations of expertise were lost forever.

But, as I learnt in my research, that was not the whole story. Many gardens were abandoned, but many new were created. Before WW1, the Edwardians had lived in a brave new world of luxurious imports and the novelty of canned foods. As imports were threatened by the dangers of new-fangled submarines, necessity sent the population at home growing once more. Land girls took over the roles of agricultural workers, and schoolchildren grew vegetables wherever they could. Like today (and in the 1970s of the BBC’s ‘The Good Life’), the expense of fresh food led to a huge upsurge in allotments and self-sufficiency.  Tips appeared in the newspapers for the best ways to preserve tomatoes and beetroot for the winter ahead, and arguments ranged over the best way to grow, and where allotments should be placed.

So much was learnt in WW1 that was taken on to the organisation that swung into place in WW2, and beyond. Some of my earliest memories are of the gardens of aunts and uncles, who had no doubt absorbed memories of the First World War from their parents, and then lived themselves through the Second World War. Their gardens were full of flowers, but there was always a vegetable garden at the back, filled with peas and beans and raspberry canes. They still preserved what they could, even though this was the 1960s and another brave new world of seemingly endless plenty.

I also remember those WW1 allotments in my own garden, which originally was a long strip, like many of the quarrymen’s gardens in this part of Wales. Amongst the thin, rocky soil, I’ve a patch that is rich from generations of vegetables being grown to supplement subsistence wages. Unlike those previous generations, I’ve the luxury of a polytunnel for extra protection against the wind, and additional warmth halfway up a mountain. There’s a very strange thing about my polytunnel. It’s the only place I can grow red poppies. I’ve tried so many times in the garden, but only the yellow Welsh ones appear. Then last year, when I was trying to find poppies to photograph for the update of my website, there they were: a little patch in amongst the rocket. It gave me tingling feeling. I’m keeping my fingers crossed they reappear this year.

So this is my WW1 garden. Not a potter’s garden, but a quarryman’s garden. With it lie the memories of those who were lost, and those at home who kept the nation and the soldiers fed, and who, like the act of faith that is the essence of all gardening, found the strength to carry on amidst so much loss, and build the world anew.

My Unexpected Lessons from a Literature Wales Writers Bursary by Juliet Greenwood

This time last year I was a few weeks into my three-month Writers’ Bursary from Literature Wales. It was the first time I’d even been given the chance to be a full-time writer, and I was still pinching myself with glee. I still am.

It wasn’t the first time I’d tried for a bursary. In fact, all in all, I’d been trying for over ten years. I’d been short-listed a few times, but I’d always been left – well, let’s be honest – intensely jealous of the fortunate few who were successful, and feeling more than a little frustrated. If only…

But, when I came to it, I’m glad it took that long. All those years were a long, hard apprenticeship in what it really took to be a writer. I’d had the endless rejections and critiques over those years. Each time plunged into the deep, dark night of the soul, wondering if I was just fooling myself after all, followed by picking myself up again, dusting myself off, squaring my shoulders and starting all over again with new determination.

Also during those years, my alter ego, ‘Heather Pardoe’, had written stories for magazines and novellas, learning to work to a brief while still retaining her individual voice and not to be precious about it all. In fact, to become a professional. So that when I finally had the call from Honno Press to say that they liked the novel I’d submitted to them, but didn’t think it was quite ready for publication, I was prepared to jump at the offered chance to work with one of their editors. All that experience told me that, even though there were no guarantees that the then-named ‘Blodeuwedd’s Garden’ would ever be published, I was being offered a rare and precious chance that would take me nearer to my dream.

That exhilarating, eye wateringly painful, breathtaking rollercoaster of a ride, working with my wonderful editor, Janet Thomas, when I was stretched and supported and pushed to dig deeper and go further than I could ever have believed possible, led to the book that became ‘Eden’s Garden’, and finally made me a writer.

That year ‘Eden’s Garden’ was published, I was so busy coming to terms with another new world, that of publicity, Amazon algorithms and social networking, that I flung in my application to Literature Wales at the last minute. So when I had the phone call several months later, I assumed I’d missed out something in my application. I was tired. I was frazzled. I’d just driven for hours along winding Snowdonian roads stuck behind the obligatory tractor, two caravans having a nervous breakdown and a bus. I scowled at the answer phone and almost left it until Monday morning. But then I decided I’d better be grown up about this and deal with it, and grabbed a notepad.

It never crossed my mind as I made that phone call, that this would be the life changing one. Since I couldn’t tell anyone (apart from my day job, who are thankfully amazingly tolerant and supportive, as I hadn’t even bothered to say this time that I’d applied, since there didn’t seem any point) I spent weeks feeling I was about to burst.

After all this, I was almost afraid, when the three months started, that it would be a disappointment. It wasn’t. I loved every minute of my Bursary. The sheer privilege of being paid to write and not having to think about anything else, meant that I got up every morning raring to go. After years of fighting to find a few hours here and there, I went for it.

It was about now, a few weeks in, that I realised the other benefit. I could actually stop for the evening. Switch off (as much as a writer ever can) and come back refreshed. Catch up with my reading. I even took a few days off to paint the house, something I’d resent in normal times for taking me away from precious writing time, but now was therapeutic, empowering and fun. It was the space to think and to plan that was as much a benefit as the time to write.

Perhaps most of all – and something that doesn’t end with the three months – is the validation of being entrusted with a bursary. A few years ago the responsibility would have floored me. I’d have panicked. I’d have run round like a headless chicken quite sure I could never live up to the weight of expectation and, quite probably, afraid to start.

Ironically, it was those long years of rejection and not being awarded a bursary that meant that when it came, it came at the right time. So thank you to Literature Wales, for entrusting me with the time to finish ‘We That Are Left’ – and allowing me to slip into my writer’s skin and know from the bottom of my heart that this is what I was born for. It’s a lesson I’ll carry with me for the rest of my life.

Book Launch for We That Are Left

Friday was the launch for Juliet Greenwood's new book, We That Are Left and the Novelistas gathered together to celebrate.

Juliet Greenwood with her brand new book, We That Are Left.

Books, cakes and goodie bags!

 Juliet Greenwood with June Francis.

 Juliet Greenwood with Trisha Ashley.

 Chocolate cake! This cake is suitable for vegans and is gluten-free and sugar-free. Recipe courtesy of Plant Based Alchemy.

Juliet' s seed cake. You can find the recipe on her blog.

We That are Left
Out now!

August 4th, 1914: ‘It was the day of champagne and raspberries, the day the world changed.’ Juliet Greenwood’s moving, thrilling novel honours the sacrifice of soldiers and civilians in World War I and captures how lives were changed afterwards, some destroyed, but some, with love and courage, rebuilt anew. Elin lives a luxurious but lonely life at Hiram Hall. Her husband Hugo loves her but he has never recovered from the Boer War. Now another war threatens to destroy everything she knows. With Hugo at the front, and her cousin Alice and friend Mouse working for the war effort, Elin has to learn to run the estate in Cornwall, growing much needed food, sharing her mother’s recipes and making new friends – and enemies. But when Mouse is in danger, Elin must face up to the horrors in France herself. And when the Great War is finally over, Elin’s battles prove to have only just begun.

Maids of Honour (Recipe) by Juliet Greenwood

These are old-fashioned cakes that I found in a 1914 cookbook. I thought I’d never tried them before, but after I’d made them and look a bite they were strangely familiar. I think my mum or my aunts must have made them when I was a child. They are delicious and easy to make – especially with frozen pastry to cheat!

Just after I’d tried mine, I stumbled across Jamie Oliver attempting to revive them on ‘Jamie and Jimmy’s Friday Night Feast’. They had far more variety and tried more modern versions – ones I definitely want to have an attempt! I like the sound of chocolate, apricot, strawberry and brandy & vanilla. Yum!

I used to live near Richmond, but sadly I don’t think I ever discovered this wonderful bakery, ‘The Original Maids of Honour’ , where you can find out more about the history. (Henry VIII is supposed to have named them ‘Maids of Honour’ – they are THAT traditional) and even sample some of Jamie Oliver’s creations. I fancy Apricot myself …

Elin’s Maids of Honour from ‘We That are Left’

Ingredients

Eight teaspoonsful of sugar,

One egg

2 oz (60g) ground almonds

Pinch of baking powder

Packet of frozen puff pastry

Raspberry jam

Method

Beat the sugar and the egg together, then stir in the almonds. Put the baking powder last. Have some patty-pans/muffin tins lined with puff-paste (frozen is fine), lay a teaspoon of raspberry jam at the bottom of each, and cover with a teaspoon of the mixture. (I decorated them with toasted almond flakes, which worked well.)

Bake in a moderate oven - 200C (180C if fan assisted) Gas Mark 6 for about 20 minutes.

Enjoy!