D. R. Hill, "Who Is Claude Cahun?"

D. R. Hill (David Rowland Hill) is a writer, actor and theatre director, who also founded the cultural consultancy, ArtReach. His new play, Who is Claude Cahun?, runs at London’s Southwark Playhouse from 18 June to 12 July 2025. In 2023 and 2024 there were two touring productions of his play, Draining the Swamp, about Oswald Mosley and the rise of fascism. Previous publications include Under Scan (co-written with Rafael Lozano-Hemmer), Voices of Culture (The Role of Culture in Promoting Refugee Inclusion) co-written as a commission from the European Union, and ArtReach – 25 Years of Cultural Development. His short stories "3250" and "House Clearance" have both been published by Bandit Fiction and "The Escort’s Story" by The Channel. His collection of short stories, House Clearance, published by Dixon and Galt, was shortlisted for the Eyelands International Book Awards in 2019. In 2021 he was shortlisted for a second time by Eyelands for his novel, From Now On. He has also had original plays performed by Theatre Station Blyth and Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham and for Cheltenham Literature Festival, he co-wrote Peace in Our Town with Barrie Keeffe. 

About Who is Claude Cahun?, by D. R. Hill

A true story of artist resistance.

Claude Cahun, queer artist from the 1930s, challenged gender norms in a surrealist, male-dominated Paris art scene. Born Lucy Schwob into a French, Jewish family, they and lifelong partner, Marcel Moore (born Suzanne Malherbe), relocated to Jersey. When the Nazis invaded the Channel Islands in 1940, Cahun and Moore determined to use guerrilla art to subversively resist Nazi oppression. Their story, challenging fascism and evading the Gestapo, has remained hidden for too long. It is a testament to courage and self-acceptance of a search for identity.

"Neuter is the only gender that really suits me" - Claude Cahun.

With an inclusive cast of five actors, moving image and projection mapping, and surreal masks and movement, DRH Arts and Exchange Theatre realise the extraordinary story of Cahun and Moore at Southwark Playhouse Borough from 18 June to 12 July (eves 7.30 and Tuesday and Saturday matinees at 3pm). Find out more here. Below, you can read a short excerpt from the play.    

From Who Is Claude Cahun? 

Extract from the play

Scene 11 

(Projected image of a Parisian apartment, Montmartre, autumn 1933. Cahun and Moore are constructing a sculpture with masculine and feminine elements. They delight in working together.)

Moore: She, he, or it? What do we call this?

Cahun: I call it "myself." 

Moore: So you are?

Cahun: It always depends where I am.

Moore: When you’re with me?

Cahun: Why can’t I change my mind?

Moore: You can. You are a gallery of people.

Cahun: And you are my curator. (Pause). Neuter is the only gender that really suits me. I love working with you. I can’t make art with the others. I feel despised by them. They don’t acknowledge my art.

Moore: When did you first know you were different?

Cahun: As far back as I can remember. When I saw little girls, they looked alien to me. My mother wanted to doll me up, just like them. I didn’t want to be like that. What did you want to be? When you were a child.

Moore: A boy. And then an artist, a designer.

Cahun: And now?

Moore:  A photographer of course. With my own gallery. Presenting the pictures I want to present. The pictures of you! 

Cahun: I want us to be successful artists together. You are the photographer and I am your model … unless you want to be the model.

Moore: I don’t want to be the model. I want to capture you, with every mask that you choose to wear. 

Cahun: You’ll be taking a lot of pictures!

Moore: I want to capture your essence…

Cahun: You will never capture it! You know that. I don’t know what it is.

Moore: I know, that’s why I love you.

Cahun: Is it? You do love me, don’t you?

Moore: Of course! (They embrace). Every day I meet you anew.

Anna Vaught, "The Zebra and Lord Jones"

Anna Vaught is an English teacher, Creative Writing teacher, mentor, editor and author of several books, including Saving Lucia, Famished, Ravished and These Envoys of Beauty. Her short creative works and features have been widely published, and she has written for the national press and has had a column with The Bookseller and Mslexia. In 2022 Anna launched The Curae, a new literary prize for carers. Anna is also a guest university lecturer, a tutor for Jericho Writers, and volunteers with young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. She is the mother of three sons, comes from a large Welsh family and lives in Wiltshire. The Zebra and Lord Jones is her third novel and seventh book.

About The Zebra and Lord Jones

A listless aristocrat, Lord Jones, finds himself in London during the Blitz, attending to insurance matters. A zebra and her foal, having escaped from the London Zoo during a bombing, cross his path, and he decides to take them back to his estate in Pembrokeshire. Little loved by his fascist-sympathiser parents, something in Lord Jones softens, and he realises he is lost, just like these zebras. 

The arrival of the zebras sparks a new lease of life on the Pembrokeshire estate, and it is not only Lord Jones but the families his dynasty has displaced that benefit from the transformation. Full of heart and mischief, The Zebra and Lord Jones is a hopeful exploration of class, wealth and privilege, grief, colonialism, the landscape, the wars that men make, the families we find for ourselves, and why one lonely man stole a zebra in September 1940 – or perhaps why she stole him.

You can read more about The Zebra and Lord Jones on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read an excerpt from the novel. 

From The Zebra and Lord Jones, by Anna Vaught

It is the autumn of 1940 and the staff of the London Zoo have been hard at work on the preparations for keeping the animals safe. Soon, the Blitz will begin. All the venomous creatures have already been destroyed in case of their escape, or perhaps to prevent their falling into the wrong hands; as in other menageries, the seals have been sequestered for submarine-detection training; in food shortages, some of the smallest creatures have been fed to the biggest and hungriest. Londoners have taken to the animal-adoption scheme to help keep the creatures in food and bedding; some of the tiniest are boarding with families, with the dormice shoeboxed out. It is some miniscule recompense for owners of the 750,000 pets put down when war broke out. But then, late one September night, the zebra enclosure suffers a direct hit, and Mother the zebra and her foal Sweetie escape and outrun the keepers. This is a true story, and is recounted in the journals of Dr Sidney Huxtable, eminent zoologist and director of the zoo, who gave directions that night for the seal pond to be drained in order to provide more water for the firefighters. 

Also in the city that night – as the zebra and her foal ran amidst the flames and rubble, through a tableau of extraordinary suffering – was Lord Robert Ashburn, Baron Jesmond (to be known to you as ‘Lord Jones’, for which read on), attending to his family’s property in Mayfair and Knightsbridge (a little late, as ever) and accounting for insurance expectations in the event of destruction by Hitler, about which the family had serious concerns (in terms of guarding bricks and mortar) ... 

Maggie Brookes, "The Prisoner's Wife"

By Maggie Butt / Brookes

I have been writing stories and poems since I was six. After an English degree at Cardiff University I became a newspaper reporter, moving to BBC TV as an historical documentary writer / producer / director. I have published five poetry collections in the UK as Maggie Butt and my poetry website is www.maggiebutt.co.uk. 

I have been married since 1982, and when our daughters were born I left the BBC and began teaching creative writing at Middlesex University, where I stayed for 30 years. It was a huge delight and privilege to foster the writing of others. In addition to writing and teaching, I have also been a fellow of the Royal Literary Fund and Chair of the UK’s National Association of Writers in Education and have a PhD in Creative Writing from Cardiff. 

In spring 2020 (when all the bookshops were closed), my novel The Prisoner’s Wife was published in the UK, New Zealand, Australia, the USA and Canada, by imprints of Penguin Random House, under my maiden name of Maggie Brookes. My fiction website is www.maggiebrookes.uk.

About The Prisoner's Wife

Serendipity is an important part of a writer’s life, and it gave me the story which became The Prisoner’s Wife. It’s an extraordinary true story of love and courage, which was told to me in a lift by an ex-WW2 prisoner of war. He said, "I bet I could tell you a story about the war which would make your hair stand on end," and I was hooked.

He described the day two "escaped prisoners" were brought into the camp and one announced that the other was his Czech wife. The British PoWs decided to hide her in plain sight, dressed as a man, and she remained disguised as a soldier for the last six months of the war. I began to think what it was like for her to keep absolutely silent, to be surrounded every moment by men and under the gaze of the Nazi guards.

My research took me to the Imperial War Museum, to memoirs, letters, PoW Associations and finally to the Czech Republic, Poland and Germany. I first wrote the story as a long narrative poem and it was published by Snakeskin poetry e-zine as a downloadable e-chapbook and MP3 recording. Then I decided it deserved a bigger audience, and wrote it as a novel.

Below, you can read an extract from the novel. 

From The Prisoner’s Wife

Everything was quiet and still, apart from the light crunch of our boots as we crept down the deserted street. The sliver of moon disappeared behind a cloud, and we slowed our pace, barely able to make out the way ahead.

That’s when we first heard the dogs. Only one bark at first, carrying in the quiet of the night. We clutched each other’s hands, and stood still for a moment.

Then another bark.  And another.  Not muffled by the walls of a building, but out in the night, like us, out in the streets. 

Instinctively we moved away from the sound, and the buildings glowered at us, closing in. My heart was drumming, and my breath came fast. We walked more quickly. The dogs were barking, closer, echoing off the buildings, perhaps two of them, perhaps three. We turned to see if they were in sight, but the darkness was too absolute. We were acutely aware of the noise of our boots on the cobbled road.

And then there were shouts behind us, men’s voices, excited to have something to do in the boredom of the night watch, egging on the dogs, eager for the hunt. Whichever way we turned, the dogs and the men grew closer and our boots clanged louder.

It became a town of sounds: our breath, the pounding of our own blood in our ears, the clatter of our boots on the road, the dogs barking, men running and calling, closer, closer. Perhaps we could have stopped, knocked on a door and begged for help, but we didn’t. We just kept going, faster and faster, running, Bill dragging me with him. I was breathless to keep up, my kit-bag banging awkwardly against my legs. 

At last there was an opening in the terrace, an archway which led into a narrow arcade, lined with dark shops. Towards the end of the alley was an even darker place which looked like another turning, but it was only a wide doorway, up two steps, set back and hidden until we drew level with it. 

Now the dogs were almost on us, and Bill pulled me up into the doorway, threw his arms around me, squeezed me very hard and whispered, “I’m so sorry,” into my hair.  Then he pushed me away from him, so we wouldn’t be found touching. I shut my eyes and waited for the dogs’ teeth, hoped it would be over quickly.

Everything seemed to happen at once: the dogs, the men, a searchlight in my face. I raised my arm to cover my eyes, and heard the panting breath of the men, the loudness of their voices. My teeth were chattering and I had to clamp them shut. The voices behind the light became one disembodied shout in German from the senior officer. “Hands up!  Against the wall!”

We stumbled down the two steps. Bill went to one side of the doorway, and I to the other. I raised my hands arms and leaned my face against the wall to stop myself from falling, feeling the rough of the brick against my cheek. 

Behind the wall I sensed the people who lived there, scurrying like mice, listening with excitement and maybe, who knows, with pity. I bit my lips, determined not to sob, not to let it end this way.