Dear reader friends,

I must begin this letter with thanks because you are a source of inspiration for The Air Raid Book Club which is published today. This is a book inspired by and written for anyone who understands that thrill of opening a new book, of falling into a story and disappearing into a different world. It’s a feeling I know only too well having spent my life reading, recommending and writing books.

My first proper job was as a bookseller, working in a bookshop on Charing Cross Road in London which, due to its location, attracted many famous visitors. There are few places I can think of where you would end up serving Maya Angelou, the drummer from ZZ Top and General Pinochet. Aside from the books, the thing I loved most was the people who made up our community: the booksellers desperately trying to fulfil their agitated customers’ requests (‘It’s a blue book. I saw it in the window last week.’), the publishers’ reps promising that their book was destined to become an overnight bestseller, and of course the customers, some cheerful, others rude but all searching for that perfect read.

I had always wanted to write a novel set in a bookshop and as I started work on a new idea in 2021, when the world was still battling the pandemic, I realised I wanted to set it during the Second World War. It wasn’t just the history that fascinated me, I could also see similarities between the way communities rallied during lockdown and during the war. As I began to read accounts of the book clubs which sprung up during that time and how the types of readers broadened with book sales more than doubling between 1938 and 1945, the notion of setting this story in Gertie Bingham’s bookshop (as it had already become) was impossible to resist.

As part of my research, I discovered accounts of Kindertransport children who fled Nazi persecution to come to Britain. I listened to one particular story of a young girl who ended up living very close to my home town having been taken in by a local woman. It was this girl’s courage and determination which inspired me to write Hedy’s story and imagine the world into which she and Gertie are thrown and the way they navigate it together.

Above all, this is a novel about books and stories and the power they have to offer escape and comfort during the darkest of times. I hope you enjoy it.

With love,

Annie x