Lydia Syson

‘There are loads of histories that deserve remembering’ wrote Catherine Johnson this week on The History Girls blogspot, on the subject of Black History Month.  What better time to remember a few more?  Until I started work on A World Between Us, I had no idea of the roles played by black volunteers and conscripts in the Spanish Civil War – volunteers on the Republican side, Moroccan conscripts fighting for Franco.  Histories within histories. keep reading

Last Christmas I handed over present-buying duties to a reponsible other and buckled down to re-writes. By early January Hot Key had sent me a cover design.

I opened the attachment with great excitement, desperate to love it. keep reading

Cameron Jacobs and Iris Mathieson performing Si tu me quieres escribir (If you want to write to me…), a song to celebrate the launch of A World Between Us into the reading world.  I’ve started spotting that cover in bookshop windows already.

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75 years ago today my grandmother was arrested.  It must have been incredibly frightening, but by then she was used to being on the frontline. Maire Lynd (later Gaster) was one of 111 people ‘knocked off’ (as my grandfather put it) at a huge anti-fascist demonstration in Bermondsey.  Dockworkers, Communists, ILP members and Trades Councils got together to defeat Mosley’s Blackshirts as they tried to penetrate a Labour stronghold in the heart of London. keep reading