To Have and to Hold (41 page)

Those of you who know my books well will be aware of how much I strive for accuracy and so, when I first had the idea for this book, I naively thought that it would be relatively easy to research the training of nurses in the 1930s. After all, the internet is a marvellous tool. It is, but in this case it was no help at all.

As I said in the book, Birmingham then had two teaching hospitals, the Queens, which was the forerunner to the Queen Elizabeth, and the General, both totally funded by voluntary contributions. I have spent a fair amount of time at the General as a patient, though not in the 1930s I hasten to add, but I have never been into the Queen Elizabeth. So, the General was the hospital I wanted to concentrate on, especially as it is on a direct line to Erdington, where my characters were going to be based. The problem here was that the General Hospital is now Birmingham Children’s Hospital and so much of its history has been either lost or filed away in some obscure place that no-one seemed to know how to access.

In desperation, I took a trip to Birmingham in the autumn of 2005 and visited the Central Library’s Local History Department because the staff there have been so helpful in the past and I found a book called
QE Nurse
1938—1957, compiled by Doreen Tennant, Jeffrey Wood and Ann-Carol Carrington and edited by Collette Clifford. It is a brief history of nursing at the Queen Elizabeth and was a very interesting and illuminating read as well as a valuable resource for me. Despite the title, the book actually went back to 1931, detailing the difference in training at that time and later. It also stated that the training of nurses in the two hospitals was virtually identical and in fact in later years the probationers of both hospitals often had lectures together. I thought I would have to photocopy great swathes of it, but the library staff said they thought it was still in print and phoned up the publisher for me to check this and so I was able to order my own copy.

There were other important books I used when writing about this period, some of which I have used before like
Ration Book Recipes
, part of the English Heritage series compiled by Gill Cordishley. I also bought a copy of
Catholics in Birmingham
by Christine Ward Penny, which gave me a valuable insight into the history and rise of Catholicism in the city and Carl Chinn’s book
Our Brum
gave me details of the music halls and theatres and the dance halls, so prevalent at the time. Carl is a quite amazing person, who does all he can to promote my books, so a special thanks to him too.

A motor bike rally organised on the sea front, less than five minutes from my home came at just the right time. As enthusiasts, those owning vintage bikes were only too anxious to tell me about them and extol their virtues and so I was able to choose suitable bikes for my young doctors to ride.

We visited Ireland in the very early spring of 2005 to collect information for this book and I was grateful once more to the staff at the County Library at Letterkenny for their help, advice and their stock of very important
OS maps and I used Niall Nói-giallach’s book
Our Town
again detailing Letterkenny. More general thanks to all the Irish people we met and talked with, who not only are proud of their history and heritage, but know all about it and are quite willing to share it with anyone showing a spark of interest. I need to make a particular mention here of my cousin Eddie Mulligan from Donegal, who is full of suggestions for promoting my book in Ireland.

My family are very important to me and I value their support and their interest in what I write about and this was shown in the summer of 2004, when on a visit to Devon, my eldest daughter, Nikki and friends Amanda, Bernadette and Caroline ended up brainstorming the ending of this book, which was then just an unfolding idea in my head. It was terrific fun, but the book would have had a different slant altogether if I had taken on board some of their more bizarre suggestions. But thanks anyway girls, it was great.

Thanks must also go to others who have helped and championed me from the beginning, the lovely Judith Evans at Birmingham Airport and my dear friend and confidante Judith Kendall, who does so much for me and is so appreciated.

As always, a special thanks has to go to my marvellous husband Denis, who organises the trips to London and then to Ireland and Birmingham for research and promotional purposes, where he drives me wherever I wish to go and without a word of complaint. As this is just a small amount of what he actually does for me, I really think he could do with a gold star.

And then there is the stupendous team at HarperCollins. Peter Hawtin, who I actually managed to see this time I was in Brum, which is surely another notch to your belt, Peter. My editor, Susan Opie works
so hard for me that the published book would not be half as good without her input and I am always incredibly grateful. My publicist, Becky Fincham is fairly new to HarperCollins and me, but she is just terrific. There is also Clare Hey and I cannot finish these acknowledgements without special ‘hi’ to Maxine Hitchcock.

My agent, Judith Murdoch is a wonderful lady who always looks out for me and always listens to my point of view, though she is not above a little gentle bullying, which is probably good for me in the long run. All in all, I feel fully supported in all I do with a strong team surrounding me and helping me in all ways and I am incredibly grateful for this.

Last, but by no means least, are you, the readers; those who choose my books and hopefully enjoy them. Some of you write or email to tell me so, which always means a great deal to me.

And so I will use that overworked word again, but no less sincere for all that: thanks a million times to each and every one of you.

Anne Bennett was born in a back-to-back house in the Horsefair district of Birmingham. The daughter of Roman Catholic, Irish immigrants, she grew up in a tightknit community where she was taught to be proud of her heritage. She considers herself to be an Irish Brummie and feels therefore that she has a foot in both cultures. She has four children and four grandchildren. For many years she taught in schools to the north of Birmingham. An accident put paid to her teaching career and, after moving to North Wales, Anne turned to the other great love of her life and began to write seriously.
To Have and To Hold
is her tenth novel.

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