Journeys with Miss Graham - Celia Rees

Every book is a journey. A journey from first idea to publication with all the adventures, challenges, pitfalls and complications that an actual journey can entail. Even after a book has been published, its journey is not over. It is out in the world, beyond the author's control, subject to the vagaries of the market, the judgement of readers and critics, transitioning from hardback to paperback with a new cover and in this case a new title. Miss Graham's Cold War Cookbook, which I have blogged about here and here , is now Miss Graham's War.

When a book is published, it does not necessarily leave you. Miss Graham's War was eight years in the writing, a continual presence which comes back in glimpses and flashbacks. 

In the stasis of Covid, with travel impossible, I thought of the journeys taken by the eponymous Miss Graham and the journeys I had taken to follow her. It isn't completely necessary to visit the places that you are writing about, of course. The internet is a great resource, full of images and virtual tours. I find Trip Advisor particularly useful. There can't be anywhere on the planet that doesn't have an accompanying video or photomontage thoughtfully uploaded by a helpful traveller but, for me, research trips are important, giving travelling a clear purpose, sharpening awareness and observation. Research is an adventure in itself. It creates it's own stories and spying and writing have much in common: tracking your characters, their movements, where they go, who they meet. 

 Miss Graham's journey begins in London. My research began with scouting locations. I went on spy walks with my daughter, Catrin.  We went to the squares near Paddington Station to find Dori's house. It was now a particular house in a particular square. Then the journey is back through time to London in the war.

Dori's house was close to Paddington Station. One side was a great yawning cavity, the buildings flanking the gap showered with beams wedged against the walls. Dori's row was more or less intact, although some of the houses were boarded, either unsafe or waiting for their owners to return.

Miss Graham's War

From Dori's square we went to Baker Street to find SOE Headquarters. The building has kept its anonymity and is now offices above a Holland & Barratt. At the bottom of Baker Street, is a porticoed building which was also rumoured to be used by SOE. It was perfect. Not only that but just down the road was a spy shop selling surveillance equipment. Synchronicity. Always a good sign when researching. 

From London, Miss Graham goes to Northern Germany to her job with the Control Commission. She went by steam train from Liverpool Street Station to Harwich, then across to the Hook of Holland, on through Holland and into Germany, finally arriving in Hamburg. 

 I couldn't take that same journey, but I could map it in the Miss Graham's Notebook. For every book I keep a journal, just as one might when going on a real journey. It is a record of the progress of the book from first ideas to completion. 

Hamburg Station 1946

When she arrived in Hamburg, the station would have looked like this. Hamburg had been devastated by some of the most concentrated Allied bombing of the war. I flew to Hamburg and, of course, the city has healed but the church of St Nickolai has been left as it was, as a memorial, much like the cathedral in Coventry, Miss Graham's home city. She had seen devastation before, but not on the scale that confronted her in Hamburg. This is where fiction and life merge. Miss Graham is based on my aunt who took the same journey. Her story was where the book began. These and some of the photographs  she sent back to the family to show them what Germany was like in 1946. 

From Hamburg, her journey took her to Lübeck, the Hanseatic port on the Baltic where she was stationed. Lübeck had much in common with Coventry, both smallish, compact, medieval cities, both laid waste by bombing. Lübeck by the R.A.F on Palm Sunday, 1943; Coventry by the Luftwaffe on the evening of November 14th, 1940. Both city centres were devastated, both had cathedrals and churches destroyed.

When I arrived in Lübeck there were very few reminders of the destruction wrought on the city. The Marienkirche had been re-built, its iconic copper clad towers restored. Much of Lübeck's historic centre had been painstakingly re-developed, although a swathe of modern buildings through the centre indicated where the worst of the destruction had been. 

Marienkirche, Lübeck, Palm Sunday, 1943

Marienkirche now

 

Holsten Gate, Lübeck 

Miss Graham's journey did not end at Lübeck, she went to Berlin. I followed her there. Again, the city had been restored, re-built and was utterly changed from the city she found in 1946. 

The destruction wasn't necessarily worse than Hamburg or any other city. It was just bigger, more spread out, going on for mile after mile. 

Miss Graham's War

Berlin 1945 from the air

Brandenburg Gate 2013

Brandenburg Gate, Berlin, 1946

Berlin had suffered doubly, not only from Allied bombing, but from Russian shelling. It would continue to be scarred by the division of the city into Allied and Russian Zones which would eventually become East and West Berlin, divided by a wall with acres of no man's land on either side. The Wall was an extension and expression of the Iron Curtain, the division right across Germany and on through Europe, from the Baltic to the Mediterranean. 

The Iron Curtain started on the Baltic coast, only a few miles from Lübeck. A museum close to its starting point commemorates the division of a nation and a continent. A collection of concrete posts and rusting barbed wire fences, shows the border's evolution from a simple stringing of barbed wire between wooden posts and ending with three or more wire barriers, guarded by regular turrets,  the gaps between them sewn by mines. A chilling reminder of the development of the Cold War and the growth of the distrust between east and west. 

The land was the same on both sides. Undulating country, fields dotted with cattle ... The Green Border began on the Baltic. Lübeck was only a couple of miles away from it. An arbitrary line marked with sagging strands of barbed wire strung between rough-hewn poles from the forest. It followed the contours of the land, an inexorable progress up hill and down dale, through farmyards, railway stations, even houses, all the way to Czechoslovakia. The Great Divide had begun. The line had been drawn. A visible border for an invisible war. 

Miss Graham's War

I couldn't have written that if I hadn't been to that place. 

We can't travel back in time but we can go to the places we are researching. You will always see something, learn something that adds to the book, sometimes in profound ways. In the Marienkirche in Lübeck, the great bells that fell from the tower in that night of destruction are still there, melted and embedded into the stone floor. 

Marienkirche, Cross of Nails  

The bells in the Marienkirche, Lübeck

Close by, in an alcove, which still bears the signs of fierce destruction is a Cross of Nails sent from Coventry Cathedral to a sister city which had suffered just as cruelly. 

It seemed to me that in comparing Germany then to Germany now, I was witnessing a miracle of recovery and renewal, not just from the appalling and utter destruction of the Second World War, but the further bitterness and scarring of a Germany divided. 

I chose to start Miss Graham's War, not in 1946 but on the 10th November, 1989 and the falling of the Berlin Wall, a reminder of just how far and fast we have come on the road to redemption and reconciliation. 

Part of the Berlin Wall in the grounds of the Imperial War Museum

Celia Rees

www, celiarees.com

@celiarees1

@CeliaRees
Miss Graham's War, HarperCollins,  paperback publication, June 10th 2021

Reflections on Notre Dame - Celia Rees

Key Ring from Notre Dame

I am following Penny Dolan and posting about Notre Dame. Like Penny and million of others, I had visited Notre Dame. I was with my husband and he bought a key fob that is still on the car keys. We aren't particularly religious but, the pull is still there, to take something of the place, carry a talisman for protection. A building like this holds huge significance, whether you are Catholic, Protestant, or of no religion at all. So we watched in horror, like millions of others, as catastrophic and seemingly unstoppable fire tore through Notre Dame. We were one with the people of Paris, watching hands on mouths, faces wet with tears, as the flames rose above the great medieval structure and we woke the next morning not knowing how much of the magnificent building would be left.  

Notre Dame, 15th April, 2019

By a miracle (I don't use the word lightly) although the roof was gone and the spire fallen, the hundreds of brave firefighters had prevented the fire from consuming the cathedral's main structure and the iconic twin bell towers still stood. 

Although much of the interior was damaged, a human chain had rescued many of the cathedral's irreplaceable treasures. The Crown of Thrones, one of Christendom's most sacred relics, and the tunic of Louis IX, who brought the relic to France, were saved, along with gilded candlesticks, artworks and many other precious objects. They are now safely stored in Paris City Hall. It is hoped that some, at least, of the wonderful stained glass windows might also have survived. Although it seemed impossible at the height of the blaze on Monday night, Le Monde reports that although some of the windows exploded because of the heat, "the large Rose du Midi overlooking the Seine, a masterpiece of the 13th century, seems to have been preserved".

It is too early to know what caused this to happen, even to assess the true extent of the damage, but this dreadful tragedy seems to have brought the French people together. Political squabbles have been forgotten, vestes jaunes protests put aside. Already hundreds of millions of euros have been pledge for the re-building. 

I was reminded of the past destruction of other great churches and cathedrals. St. Nikolai Kirche in Hamburg, destroyed in the firestorm of July, 1943. Marien Kirche in Lübeck, severely damaged in an RAF raid on Palm Sunday, 1942 and Coventry Cathedral left a roofless ruin by the Coventry Blitz.

Marien Kirche. Lübeck: Palm Sunday Raid, 1943

Coventry Cathedral, 15th November, 1940

St. Nikolai Kirche in Hamburg

Marien Kirche, Lübeck

Marien Kirche has been re-built. A new Cathedral stands next to the ruins of the old in Coventry. A new St. Nikolai Kirche was built in the district of Harvestehude; the old church left as a memorial to the immense destruction, loss of life and property caused by the Hamburg firestorm. There are messages of hope here. Even after near complete destruction, re-building and renewal are possible.

After all the photographs and footage of the destruction of Notre Dame, the most powerful image came the morning after as a shaft of sunlight illuminated the cross still standing on the Cathedral's altar. I was reminded of the burnt cross in Coventry, made from two charred beams found crossed on the floor of the cathedral the day after the raid. In this Holy Week, could there be a more potent message of indestructible faith?

Notre Dame, 16th April, 2019

Burnt Cross on the alter of the Old Cathedral, Coventry

Celia Rees
www.celiarees.com