Right up until the end of her life, Nancy Worrall kept a faded black-and-white photograph of her wartime lover beneath the glass on her dressing table. Martin Preston was the dashing young Oxford undergraduate she fell in love with in 1938 — the fiancé she thought she would spend the rest of her life with before World War II separated them for ever.
Called up and sent to France to fight the advancing Germans, Martin penned Nancy a stream of achingly beautiful letters and poems, until one day they stopped arriving at her Buckinghamshire home.
Like thousands of women whose love story were torn apart by war in Europe, Nancy learnt to bury her grief and get on with her life. She went on to marry another man, and photographs of her husband and three sons also sat beneath the dressing table glass.
Juxtaposed with Martin’s ever-youthful face, they were a constant reminder of the flesh-and-blood family which could never have existed if her first great love had returned.
The separation of Nancy Worrall from her fiance Martin Preston during World War II is to be retold by her son Simon Worrall in a new romance novel, The Very White Of Love.
The paperback edition of The Very White Of Love will be published on December 13th. And I am delighted to be able to share the new cover. Looks gorgeous! Here’s an extract from a two-page feature in the Daily Mail about the book: Extract Right up until the end of […]
New Paperback Cover – Hot Off The Presses!
Here is a roundup of the all the great Press and media we have got for The Very White Of Love. My publicity team at Harper Collins, headed by the brilliant Joe Thomas, has done a fantastic job. BROADCAST BBC MIDLANDS TODAY – TV Interview, 4th June BBC JOHNNY I’ANSON – Radio Interview, […]
Press and Media Roundup
1 The Telegraph Magazine published a gorgeously illustrated feature article about the book this Saturday, 30th June. Many thanks to my editor, Francesca Ryan, for all her hard work and patience getting this to press. A Memory From Sixty Years Ago The article was in fact an essay they asked me […]
Telegraph Magazine Feature
Love letters have a unique, powerful appeal.What is it that makes them so powerful? The handwriting? The envelopes?The paper? The intimate nature of them? Or is it just because, in the age of SMS’ and email, there is something wonderful about the idea of someone sitting down, usually alone, formulating […]
The Magic Of Love Letters
Amazon Reviews have started to come in. We have five so far, and all of them are 5*! We have also had some great press, which is really exciting. So I thought I would post a selection of them here. Press ‘A love story told in exquisitely poetic letters’ DAILY […]
Amazon Five Star Reviews
Last Thursday, we celebrated the book launch of The Very White Of Love at the Special Forces Club in Knightsbridge. So I wanted to share some photographs. It was the perfect venue for a love story set in World War Two. As someone said, it feels like something out of […]
Book Launch Party Thursday June 21st
Johnny L’Anson is an extremely popular talk radio host. So it was great to appear on his show yesterday to talk about the Book ( I am on at about the 2hr 1′ mark) He’s based at the BBC on Leeds, but his show, which is a mix of music […]
Johnny l’Anson Show BBC
Oxford features a lot in The Very White Of Love. So it was a great pleasure to go into the studio yesterday and talk to morning host, Kat Gorman.(My interview starts at about 1hr. 10′) Nancy lived as a child in Cowley, where my grandfather was a tax inspector. And […]
BBC Radio Oxford
The Daily Mail ran a TWO-PAGE feature on the book yesterday. It was the perfect start to the launch day! Many thanks to Barbara Davies, a fine author in her own right, for her evocative account of the story. They also featured some beautiful photos, both of Nancy and Martin, […]