1. There was no one inspirational moment when the idea of The Whispers of War came to me. I don’t remember when I first learned that Britain had interned tens of thousands of people during both world wars, but I grew up knowing about the US internment of Japanese people during WWII. I write about growing up near Santa Anita Racetrack, which was an internment camp, but I also have family on Bainbridge Island in the Puget Sound, which was the site of a large interned population.
When it comes to Nora’s job, I’d read a lot about the Air Raids Precautions Department as part of my research, and another bit of reading found me Hazel’s job. I picked up a book when I first move to London called Marriages Are Made in Bond Street all about a matrimonial agency that did booming business during World War II.
2. I found out I had a familial connection to US WWII internment camps because of a conversation at my sister’s wedding. I was telling my cousin, Derek, about the book and he mentioned that he’d done some research on one of our relatives who had been a teacher at a Japanese internment camp in the west. What was an off-handed comment turned into an even stronger bond with the story I was writing.
3. I’m a big fan of Simon May and Mark Kermode’s Film Review podcast, and I tried desperately to get one of the show’s signature sign-offs into The Whispers of War. It’s “Tinkety tonk, old fruit, and down with the Nazis,” attributed, much to my delight to the Queen Mother. She used it to end a letter written in 1941, and it’s become something of a recurring joke on the Film Review. Sadly the phrase was cut in edits. (But hello to Jason Isaacs.)
4. Henrik and Joseph were once the same person—and a hero! Henrik, Marie’s odious cousin, was once named Joseph and Joseph, Nora’s friend in the Air Raid Precautions Department, didn’t exist. In an early draft, the original Joseph was revealed to be a spy and Nora’s love interest. (I have a weakness for spies and am always trying to jam them into manuscripts.) However, that storyline wasn’t working, and I cut all of it, reshaped Joseph into Nora’s colleague, and created Henrik to explore Marie’s family dynamic a little further.
5. An air raid siren really did go off after the famous declaration of war broadcast. It sounded over London, scaring quite a few people. However, it was declared a false alarm.
6. Nora’s proposal that Tube stations be used as giant air raid shelters wasn’t just a sound one, it was actually put into practice. The government was initially resistant to the idea because of the disruption to transit. However, overwhelming need for shelter in the nation’s capitol meant that the stations were eventually opened up. People even slept on the train tracks because the trains stopped running after a certain hour.
7. The blackout dominated life in Britain during the war. I wanted to make sure that my characters felt like they were actually living during wartime London, which meant dealing with the blackout. People were ordered to keep all light from escaping their homes, torches were to be aimed down at the ground, and lamp posts were altered so they emit light into the night sky and help German bombers. Naturally, this made it very difficult for people to get around, and it’s easy to find posters warning people to take caution in the blackout. Department stores even began to carry lines of blackout fashion items such as white coats or white cloth flower corsages to help people be seen at night.