When I began to write Her Secret Soldier, an ancient forest seemed the perfect location in which to set the story. I thought of gnarled oak trees and fairy rings. Babbling brooks and moss-covered stones. Sunlight slanting down on mysterious footpaths that led from the modern world into a land that time forgot. It wasn’t difficult to imagine a shy 18-year-old girl taking refuge in such a place from her bullying step-father, nor to picture a parachute caught in the topmost branches of an oak tree and dangling from it, an injured German spy.
These days, only 2.5% of Britain remains forested, yet, ancient woodlands have impacted the mythology and literary heritage of the country more than any other landscape. Most of us remember stories from our childhood that were set in ancient woodland – The Enchanted Forest by Enid Blyton was one of my favourites. We were all of us raised on creepy fairy stories which take place in woodland, and it’s worth remembering that some of Britain’s best loved poets used forests as a setting, too – poets as diverse as William Wordsworth, Gerard Manley Hopkins and Ted Hughes.
For Shakespeare, forests had a special meaning. They were often magical places where people could retreat from the pressures of everyday life, into a world free from cares. This is what happens in As You Like It. In the play’s political world, people fight one another for dominance, but when they retreat to the Forest of Arden, they sing songs and write love poems. Forests even played a role in English history. King William II died in a hunting ‘accident’ in the New Forest in the year 1100. This is widely viewed as an assassination by his younger brother Henry, who then raced to seize the crown.
The magic of forests is deeply ingrained in us all, and it doesn’t take much to reignite our fascination with such places. In 1943, the remains of a skeleton were found inside a wych elm in Worcestershire, immediately giving rise to wild theories of occult rituals, witchcraft and even Nazi spy rings. It’s hard to imagine such stories emerging had the skeleton been found in a field!
The more I learned about ancient woodland, the more this felt like an irresistible location for a novel. People have been hiding out in ancient woodlands for hundreds of years – the myth of Robin Hood is proof enough of that. So – I thought to myself – why not a German spy?
Her Secret Soldier takes place in September 1940. Rose – a shy 18-year-old girl – regularly retreats to the ancient woodland behind her home to get away from her bullying stepfather. Then, one night, a parachute drops through the sky and lands in the canopy of an ancient oak. Running to investigate, Rose finds at the end of it a German spy, injured and afraid. Walter claims he is not loyal to Nazi Germany and always intended to turn himself in. Rose must choose between loyalty to her country and loyalty to a man she begins to love. As the plot thickens, hundreds of lives depend on the choices she makes.
Ancient woodlands may offer us a retreat from a cruel world, but they also harbour dark secrets. Fifty years after Rose and Walter meet, a very different young woman is compelled to investigate their wartime story after she discovers, in the same woodlands, a pit full of human bones.
Her Secret Soldier is published by Bookouture and will be available in print on Amazon, on Kindle Unlimited and through Audible.com on 12th September.
