Sylvia Murphy Writer Author Biography Career

It's hard to understand what The War was like unless you were there. Those of us who were kids at the time thought the world was always going to be like that - bombs being dropped on us, ration books for our food and clothes, pig swill bins on the street corners, home made Christmas presents, parents suddenly disappearing. My sister and I were looked after by our grandmother while our father fought in the army in the Middle East, and our mother joined the WAAF. Our grandmother was Swiss and taught us to speak French even before we went to school. She looked after us very well, but she was often angry (I suppose I would be if I had the struggle she had to feed us every day). It wasn't the same as having Mummy at home.

MY FATHER'S STORY IN Candy's Children

My father represented his father's business in Palestine, buying and shipping oranges to Ireland and Liverpool. Because the couple were expecting their second child in 1939, they went back to Liverpool to stay with my father's family where the baby was born. They fully intended at the time to return to Palestine but when WW2 broke out it was deemed too dangerous - apart from the main thrust of the war in Turkey and Iraq, daily life in Palestine was increasingly punctuated by riots and more serious atrocities, as the Palestinian arabs tried to prevent the Jews from taking over their land.

So, with my sister and our mother, I stayed in England for the durataion of the war while our father joined the army. When his superiors discovered that he could speak fluent Arabic he was sent back to the Middle East to join a special unit in Syria. My father wrote about all his adventures when he was an old man with an unquiet spirit. For a long while after his death I didn't read it, then I realised that if I didn't read what he had written, and if I didn't find a way of writing my version, the knowledge of the past would soon fade away. So I have used his story, and what my mother and grandmother told me about Palestine, and what I remember about the war days, to write my latest book, CANDY'S CHILDREN.

I have heard from several readers that the Palestine I write about evokes for them the Palestine they knew when they were younger. Also that the parts of my story set in England remind them of how the war years were for them. It's good to know that many of you are enjoying my book (otherwise why would you bother to say so) but we could do with more of you spreading the word that it IS a good read. With the holidays coming on you might think of taking it with you to while away those frustrating hours spent sitting on your suitcase in some foreign airport (or even some non-foreign one, where, I hear, things don't always happen on time.)

In the meantime I have just finished the final draft of TRUST - another story about another family who can't get it together. I think the story works very well - evey time I read it through I feel more encouraged. If you go to my blogspot (http://sylviamurphyreadersandwriters.blogspot.com) you will be able to read the opening paragraph.

About Sylvia Murphy

Biography

WAR WITHOUT MUMMY