Stourbridge author to tell moving wartime story at book festival (From Stourbridge News)

Stourbridge author to tell moving wartime story at book festival

9:00am Saturday 1st September 2012 in News

A FIRST-TIME author from Stourbridge will be telling the moving tale of her mother’s wartime experiences at a book festival in Worcestershire next month.

Cherryl Vines was inspired to write Pamela’s War after hearing some of her mother’s memories from World War Two, in particular a doomed love affair with a young airman.

Interior designer Cherryl said: “She told me she had fallen in love with an older man and would have married him, but he was killed in a Spitfire accident.

“Had he lived, I would not exist - but I wept at the tragedy and the unfairness of it all.”

Pamela, now 88, agreed her story ought to be shared with the rest of the family, and asked her daughter to record her memories of wartime in Clent and Birmingham.

Cherryl says the manuscript soon became more than a family archive, and completely took over her life.

She recalls: “Although I knew many of the stories, I was staggered at the sequence of events that shaped and reshaped my mum’s life so many times.

“She lost so many young friends, her home and most of her belongings, and she and her parents narrowly escaped death in an air raid.

“It was strange; I almost became Pamela for the purpose of the book, writing in the first person and finding myself thinking of and describing my grandparents as my own parents.”

Cherryl will be reading excepts from and answering questions on Pamela’s War at Bewdley Library on Wednesday October 17 from 11am as part of Bewdley Festival Book Week.

Tickets cost £2.

Book Week, in association with the Stourbridge News’s sister title - Kidderminster Shuttle, begins on Tuesday October 2 with a literary lunch with crime legend PD James, taking place at Mercure Bewdley.

Tickets cost £30; visit www.bewdleyfestival.org for details and to book.

Other authors in attendance will include best-selling husband and wife crime writers Nicci Gerrard and Sean French (better known under their joint pseudonym Nicci French) and Elkie Brooks, with her new autobiography, Finding My Voice.

Tickets for all events are available from Bewdley Tourist Information Centre and events cost between £2 and £5, or visitors can save over £20 by buying a season ticket for £30.

Dates and times for all events can be found on www.bewdleyfestival.org.uk and www.kidderminstershuttle.co.uk/leisure - or for regular updates check out www.facebook.com/BewdleyBookWeek and Twitter: @BewdleyBookWeek.