Nan Green

Nan Green 

1904-1984

On my research travels for my novel, I've unearthed some really fascinating characters. I've just finished reading a book called 'Doves of War' by Paul Preston which is the biography of four women (two British and two Spanish) whose lives were all profoundly affected by the events of the Spanish Civil War. One of these British women was Nan Green, a young, working class married woman with two children. She loved walking and music and was utterly devoted to her family. But in 1937, Nan agonised for weeks before taking the decision to leave her children in a boarding school in England so that she could join her husband in war-torn Spain.

As a mother, I can understand the anguish she must have felt to be separated from her young children, but what it is harder for me to understand (for I, thankfully, live in a time of relative peace) is what drove her far from home to fight in a war that was not her own. The ideals of the droves of International Brigades and nurses who flocked into Spain between 1936 and 1939 were so strong - these were not adventure-seekers, they were men and women who truly believed that if they could fight and defeat fascism on Spanish soil, a larger war could be averted. And although they did not succeed in Spain, their ideal lives on.

Nan Green helped countless people in Spain, nursing hundreds of injured people and helping take refugees to Mexico at the end of the war. She returned to England with her husband 'missing.' After tortuous weeks of waiting, she had to break the news to her children and his parents that he wasn't coming back...

...one of the many inspiring, forgotten voices who wove her passion for liberty and human dignity into her work.

Tree

My eldest daughter in the magnolia tree outside our house this spring

A fantastic source of motivation for my writing has, for years, been through Mslexia - a magazine for women who write. It comes out 4 times a year and with each new publication there is a call for short stories or poems on a given theme and I try as often as I can to submit. For the current edition, they're asking for stories on the theme '2211', ie looking forward two hundred years and being inspired from that point. Initially I thought ugh, science fiction, not my forte at all. But I quickly realised that was very defeatist of me, and more to the point, I should know by now that the chosen entries are always very wide-ranging and the theme can be interpreted very broadly; it just needs to serve as inspirational springboard.

Anyway, I spent a while pondering the theme and came up with an idea with a tree a part of the principle narrative (not going to go into it here, just in case somebody nicks my idea, tee hee!). But after deciding that, we were sitting at lunch one day and I was telling my family about the theme and asked everybody 'What do you think the world will be like in 200 years time?' My eldest daughter (age 5), without even stopping to think about it, looked at me and in a very serious little voice, replied 'There won't be any trees.' I was stunned - firstly that the idea of trees had come to her immediately since that's what I was going to use anyway, but also that she had quite such an apocalyptic, or should I say bleak vision for the future. Where did this come from? I think I must talk about our need to protect our planet more than I realise. And whilst I am really, really pleased that she is taking this on board, I also don't want to overburden the little love and want her to believe that things are heading in the right direction! Quite sobering.

In the meantime, I'm going to start penning my tale about my tree, and whilst I'm doing this, I want my children to be able to climb from branch to branch to their hearts' content. And I truly hope that in two hundred years time, our future generations will be able to do the same.

Wise words

'I cannot help thinking that to entertain is sufficient ambition for the novelist, and it is certainly one which is hard to achieve; if he can tell a good story and create characters that are fresh and living he has done enough to make the reader grateful. You will not have failed to notice that many novels are written which have every possible excellence and yet are quite unreadable. I hope you will not think it a willful eccentricity when I tell you that I look upon readableness as the highest merit that a novel can have.'


W Somerset Maugham