"Bloody Fritz! Got him in the eye! Take that home to the Kaiser!" He fashioned his hands into guns and shot at the passers-by. It soothed him to see the school functioning without him, and to know that he was above it.Įllwood also liked to sit on the roof. He liked watching boys dipping in and out of Fletcher Hall to pilfer biscuits, prefects swanning across the grass in Court, the organ master coming out of Chapel.
It was Gaunt, however, who truly loved the roof perch.
He was always scrambling around places he shouldn't. Now death surrounds them in all its grim reality, often inches away, and no one knows who will be next.Īn epic tale of both the devastating tragedies of war and the forbidden romance that blooms in its grip, In Memoriam is a breathtaking debut.Įllwood was a prefect, so his room that year was a splendid one, with a window that opened onto a strange outcrop of roof. To Gaunt's horror, Ellwood rushes to join him at the front, and the rest of their classmates soon follow. When Gaunt's family asks him to enlist to forestall the anti-German sentiment they face, Gaunt does so immediately, relieved to escape his overwhelming feelings for Ellwood. Gaunt, half German, is busy fighting his own private battle-an all-consuming infatuation with his best friend, the glamorous, charming Ellwood-without a clue that Ellwood is pining for him in return. News of the heroic deaths of their friends only makes the war more exciting. The violence of the front feels far away to Henry Gaunt, Sidney Ellwood and the rest of their classmates, safely ensconced in their idyllic boarding school in the English countryside.
If you're a fan of the show, please remember to subscribe and rate us 5-stars on Apple and Spotify.It's 1914, and World War I is ceaselessly churning through thousands of young men on both sides of the fight. We also learn how inspiration for the novel came from reading archival newspapers published by her alma mater, Marlborough, regularly listing the wounded and dead amongst former students throughout the war.įinally, her cat makes a most welcome appearance on mic a first for The Hatchards Podcast. On this episode, we were joined by Alice Winn, author of the Hatchards Fiction Book of the Month, 'In Memoriam,' her highly-acclaimed debut.īeginning at the onset of WWI, Winn's novel follows lifelong friends Gaunt and Ellwood from the confines of their cloistered English boarding school to the horrors of trench warfare, as a forbidden romance of fits-and-stars slowly blossoms between them.Īlice spoke to us about the parallels in attitude felt by young people during that time period and the present taking ideas from the life of Siegfried Sassoon and the dangers of complacency within a peacetime society.
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