THE GIRL WHO DISAPPEARED facts

THE GIRL WHO DISAPPEARED a fact based historical novel

I have been asked to reveal just how fact based the book is. The relevant facts are as follows:-

Emily had furious rows with her parents who did not approve of her fiancé.

She eloped, married him and the same day sailed to America where he took up his Fulbright scholarship, first at Harvard, then in New York and finally California. He had the two articles published in the British Bankers Magazine.

They returned to London in September 1934 and rented a house in Petts Wood where I was born. Emily was a pacifist but Walter knew war was inevitable, he worked for Lloyds Bank as described.

I remember the picnic in the woods where a damaged German bomber flew over us at treetop height before attempting to bomb the railway and in fact destroying our Anderson shelter.

We were moved to Bournemouth where I did wave to the pilot of the German spotter plane who did wave back. We suffer the major air-raid as described, my father joined the army and Emily and I were evacuated to Hebden Bridge via Manchester which had been heavily bombed.

We did sail in a storm to the Isle of Man where father had been commissioned and a periscope caused panic. Returning to Hebden Bridge, we spent the winter in a freezing farm cottage.

Father was sent by the army to assess the possibility of German paratroops landing on the moors and to organise resistance. We moved to Manchester where I went to school.

The subsequent chapters on Dulwich College, father's post war career as manager of Lloyds Bank Keighley and my early career as a solicitor are all factual.

James Lingard