Maggie Brookes, "Acts of Love and War"

Maggie Brookes is an ex-journalist and BBC historical documentary producer turned novelist and poet. She relishes uncovering stories about the strength of women and the power of friendship and love in the most terrible of circumstances. Acts of Love and War, published in 2022, is a heartrending tale of love, courage and sacrifice, following three young British volunteers in the Spanish Civil War. The Prisoner's Wife – based on an extraordinary true story of WW2 – was published around the world in 2020. Maggie taught Creative Writing at Middlesex University for thirty years and has had six poetry collections published under the name Maggie Butt. Her website is here. She is on Twitter @maggie__brookes

About Acts of Love and War, by Maggie Brookes

Maggie's second novel Acts of Love and War tells the story of Lucy who braves the horrors of the Spanish civil war to bring back two brothers - and ends up saving the lives of thousands of children. The two brothers are rivals for her affection and she loves them equally, or thinks she does. 

Author Nikki Marmery calls the novel,  "A love story with a twist; a war story with a difference." It draws on the memoirs of extraordinary women who worked to deliver humanitarian aid to refugee children. 

As the war intensifies, Lucy realises the challenge is not so much which brother she will end up with but whether any of them will survive. 

You can see more about Acts of Love and War on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read an extract from the novel. 

From Acts of Love and War

Hertfordshire, England, 1921

Lucy was sitting in her favourite place, halfway up the mahogany staircase, with a doll laid across her lap. From here she could see all the comings and goings of the house. She watched as her father opened the front door and light flooded into the panelled hall, fixing that morning in her memory forever, as if that was the day someone wound the clockwork and her life began. 

Her father ushered Mrs Murray inside and took her to the drawing room. Behind her came two boys, silhouetted in the doorway against the bright day beyond: a bigger boy holding tight to the hand of his little brother. Jamie and Tom stood still for a moment, on the threshold of Lucy’s life, and then moved cautiously forward into the unknown hall. As they walked towards her their dark outlines blushed into colour and rounded into flesh. 

Lucy thought one of them looked a little older than her and one a bit younger, perhaps seven and four. The bigger boy, Jamie, wore a school uniform with blazer, tie and short trousers. The small boy who gripped his hand was dressed in a sailor suit. As light fell on to their faces from the landing window behind her, Lucy saw Jamie’s lips were clenched hard between his teeth in the effort not to show his feelings, while Tom gazed all about in a mixture of fear and curiosity. They were as unalike as two brothers ever could be. Jamie had his mother’s blue eyes, sandy hair and freckled skin, while Tom’s eyes were brown as his hair; Jamie was skinny, as if he’d grown too fast, while Tom was square and solid; Jamie was pale as a china doll, whereas Tom was all aglow.

Lucy knew these were the boys who were coming to live in the little cottage next door. The boys with the dead father. She turned over the thought in her mind like a shiny new penny and imprinted on its reverse side she found the fact of her own dead mother. 

She watched as the boys became accustomed to the relative darkness of the wide hallway and caught sight of her on the stairs above them. When their gaze met hers, something seemed to catch in her throat and an unfamiliar shiver ran through her. She set aside her doll and stood up.

Later they told her that rays of sun from the landing window illuminated the blonde curls which encircled her head. But all she would remember was the way they stopped and stared as though she was a vision, as though she could become the fixed point in the turmoil of their lives. As though she would save them. 

Maggie Butt, "everlove"

By Maggie Butt

A year when bookshops are closed is not the best for a writer, but it has been busy for me. My sixth poetry collection, everlove is published in April 2021 by The London Magazine Editions and my novel The Prisoner’s Wife was published by Penguin Random House imprints across the world in 2020, under my maiden name Maggie Brookes.

My poetry appears widely in international magazines and anthologies, and has escaped the page into a mobile phone app, choreography, BBC Radio 4, readings and festivals. I have judged a number of international poetry competitions.

My previous collections are the pamphlet Quintana Roo (2003) and my first full collection, Lipstick (2007). In 2010 a collection of  pocket-sized poems, petite, came out and in 2011, Oversteps Books published Ally Pally Prison Camp, the story of 3,000 civilians imprisoned at Alexandra Palace during the First World War told through a historical collage of poems, photos, paintings and extracts from memoirs and letters. Sancti Clandestini – Undercover Saints, a fully illustrated poetry collection, was published in 2012 and an exhibition to accompany the book was held at The Poetry Cafe in Covent Garden. My fifth collection of poetry Degrees of Twilight was published by The London Magazine in July 2015.

Poetry was my first love, but my career has spanned other forms of writing. After an English degree at Cardiff University I became a newspaper reporter, moving to BBC TV as a documentary writer / producer / director. I have a PhD in Creative Writing from Cardiff University and was a University Teaching Fellow and University Orator at Middlesex University, where I taught Creative Writing for 30 years. 

Poetry website: www.maggiebutt.co.uk

Fiction website: www.maggiebrookes.uk

You can read more about The Prisoner's Wife on Creative Writing at Leicester here. 

About everlove

everlove brings together poems written over a six year period. The first section is a sequence of poems about the refugee crisis, inspired by the artworks of American artist Mary Behrens.  The second examines other issues close to many of our hearts including the climate emergency and personal loss. The third part celebrates the joys of the natural world and the adventures of life and love. 

Below, you can read three poems from the collection

From everlove

Torn 

Someone
someone took your life
your life and tore it down the middle
down the middle then crossways into smaller
smaller pieces as if it was a letter
a letter from an unfaithful lover. 

So now you know that the gods, the fates
the fates, the gods
care less for you than a scrap of paper
a scrap of paper. 

And though you run about
run about and catch them all
all blowing and raining about you like ticker-tape
tickertape
you can’t see how
how you could begin
begin to stick them together 
stick them together
to make a life again. 

So you tuck them carefully 
carefully into your pocket
and walk
and walk
and walk. 

March 

ha, ha, ya-di-ya,
hoikin’ up the heaterin’
till all yer little froggies
start grippin’ and slitherin’ 
broilin’ up a pondstorm 
spewin’ out frogspawn;
an all yer soppysilly buds
simpering curtseylike
la,la,la daffydowndillys,
an all the stoopid sheepies 
bleatin’ well birthin’ 
slopperin’ out their mewlin’ 
lambikins on the grassygreen; 
an all the neverlearn peeps
optimisted, hopeblinkered
cheerfool an’ headsoft
let liddle chidderlins
disvest unglove 
castclout slipscarf 
sayin’ in like a lion
out like a lamb 
an me snickerin’ 
ha,ha, this’ll learn ya 
tempdrop icenose
sleetslash hailhurt
flakefall freezeball, 
snowstormin’ blizzardin’ 
hidin’ up the lambkins
an the daffydillys
springclean 
startfresh 
whitebright 

Now I must be 

both motherandfather 
to myself 

scatter wisdom over myownhead 
like an upturned bowl of rose-petals 

name myself with sprinkled water
offer pie-and-mash advice 

pour out coldclean glassfuls 
of forgiveness 

remember to lovemyself
pridepuff at my small achievements 

love mostfiercely
my flocks of imperfections 

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.