The War Photographers was the winner in the HISTORICAL FICTION category of the 2024 IndieReader Discovery Awards, where undiscovered talent meets people with the power to make a difference.
Following find an interview with author SL Beaumont.
A massive thank you to Indie Reader for selecting The War Photographers as the 2024 Historical Fiction winner. The War Photographers is a dual-timeline novel set in 1943 during World War II and 1989 in Cold War Europe. It follows the story of Mae, a young British woman working as a translator at Britain’s top-secret codebreaking facility, Bletchley Park, who is recruited to unmask a spy. Decades later, her granddaughter, Rachel, a photojournalist, seizes the chance to visit East Berlin and uses the opportunity to search for the man whom Mae blames for betraying their family. But Rachel gets caught up in the East German protest movement and finds herself in grave danger.
What is the name of the book and when was it published?
The War Photographers, published in February 2024
What’s the book’s first line?
“Jack Knight had witnessed some horrific sights in four years as a war photographer, but nothing prepared him for the surreal scene he was about to encounter.”
What’s the book about? Give us the “pitch”.
1943 – Bletchley Park, England
Mae Webster, immersed in the clandestine world of codebreaking at Bletchley Park, is recruited to help unveil a spy who’s on the brink of exposing Britain’s most guarded secret: the cracking of the Enigma code. As war rages around her, Mae’s life takes an unexpected turn when she falls in love with the enigmatic New Zealand war photographer Jack Knight. Their relationship develops at pace, but tragedy strikes when one of Jack’s photographs risks unmasking an elusive double agent.
1989 – Berlin, Germany
Rachel Talbot, a globetrotting photojournalist, ventures into the heart of a fractured Berlin in search of the Stasi officer whom her beloved grandmother Mae blames for betraying their family. Rachel finds herself entangled in the East German uprising and is irresistibly drawn to a charismatic activist. As the Cold War threatens to boil over, Rachel races to expose a traitor before it’s too late.
What inspired you to write the book? A particular person? An event?
I’ve long been fascinated by what was achieved at Bletchley Park in England, during World War II, so my interest was piqued when I read an article a few years ago about a woman in Wellington who had worked as a codebreaker there during the war. She had moved to New Zealand after the war, had her family, and because she’d signed the Official Secrets Act, she, like most others who had worked there, had never spoken of her war work.
In fact, many never told family or friends of their achievements. We now know that the work carried out there under Alan Turing, Tommy Flowers, and others not only shortened the war by an estimated two years but also led to the invention of the modern-day computer.
I was intrigued by the idea of a crime committed during the war but not solved until years later, so Mae and Rachel’s stories were born.
What’s the most distinctive thing about the main character? Who-real or fictional-would you say the character reminds you of?
The character of Mae is drawn from the smart young debutants from aristocratic families who were sent to Bletchley Park, Britain’s top-secret codebreaking facility, early in the war for their language skills and supposed discretion. Like many of her class, Mae was fluent in French, Italian and German.
Mae’s granddaughter, Rachel, is a young woman operating in the male-dominated world of the press in the 1980s. Photojournalists, in particular, were a macho breed, but talented women such as Maria Fleet, Jane Evans, and New Zealander Margaret Moth helped to shatter the glass ceiling. These women inspired Rachel’s determination, curiosity, and desire to be where history was being made.
What’s the main reason someone should really read this book?
The War Photographers is fiction but woven around real-life historical events. I hope it highlights the sometimes overlooked achievements of women during these key periods in our recent history.