Lucy Leadbeater and Neil Robin

Lucy Leadbeater
Lucy was a student at the Gymnasium Münchenstein in Basel, Switzerland, in 2022 and as part of her studies she was required to write a 20,000-word research paper on a subject of her choice.
Her mother was born and raised on the island of Guernsey and during family visits there, Lucy had often heard her grandmother and her great-aunt talking about the occupation of the island by German forces during the Second World War and about their own evacuation to England to escape it.
She, therefore, decided to focus her dissertation on the reliability of oral history in the context of those older relatives recalling their wartime experiences some eighty years later.
Lucy's paper earned her very high marks, with the examiners commenting that it was a very interesting and moving piece of work.

 

Neil Robin
Neil has lived in Guernsey for all of his life and worked for the Guernsey civil service for thirty years, then another twelve years in journalism and public relations before retiring in 2019.
Neil is married with two children and five grandchildren and spent the first couple of years of his retirement writing a couple of books - namely A Breed Apart (published by Pegasus) and Cobo Sunset.
As an old family friend, Neil asked if he could read a copy of Lucy's paper and on doing so, he felt sure that it could be the basis for a good book.
Neil and Lucy agreed that while there had been a good number of books written about the occupation of the Channel Islands during the Second World War, there seemed to be rather less written about the experiences of the child evacuees.
This prompted them to press ahead with the idea of recording the wartime memories of Lucy's elderly relatives in a book, together with brief reminiscences from eight other child evacuees, so that these might be informative to and enjoyed by future generations.
Neil, therefore, set aside completing Cobo Sunset and turned his hand to translating Lucy's academic piece accordingly. The collaboration of Neil's creative writing skills and Lucy's research work has resulted in what you are currently holding in your hand. We hope you enjoy it.