Lydia Syson

This week there’s a chance to win a copy of That Burning Summer thanks to the The History Girls - if you already don’t know this consistently thought-provoking blog, I highly recommend exploring it.  Find out here how mooching for years on Romney Marsh inspired me to writeThat Burning Summer,  keep reading

A group of Polish fighter pilots walking away from a Hawker Hurricane in October 1940, probably at RAF Northolt in West London. They were apparently photographed after a sortie – one of over a thousand made in the first six months alone of Squadron 303′s formation.  The expressions on these young men’s faces are mixed – relief, uncertainty, perhaps even surprise and joy that they are actually still alive. keep reading

The first hint was an intriguing question in the Guardian Quiz (no. 3), then a query on Twitter. Just in time for half-term, we finally got our hands on Asterix and the Picts, the first new book in the series to be created by an entirely new writing/drawing team. keep reading

Today marks my first ever contribution to a blog that I’ve found both addictive and invaluable for the past few years.  I’ve written a guest post called ‘Guilty Pleasures’ about the influence of 1940s films on the writing of That Burning Summer, for ‘An Awfully Big Blog Adventure - the ramblings of a few scattered authors‘.    keep reading

Huge thanks to everyone who came to Review bookshop to welcome That Burning Summer into the world on October 4th – was that really a fortnight ago? And was it really only a year since we’d been at Cable Street, singing and celebrating the birth of A World Between Us, Hot Key’s fourth ever title? keep reading

I’m delighted with the new design of this website – huge thanks to Jan Bielecki and Cait Davies in particular for making it happen. And on a day which is anything but burning or summery, it has been lovely just now to walk into a nearby bookshop and see a copy of my newborn title nestling happily on the shelf next to A World Between Us.  The shop was Dulwich Books, as it happens (as you may

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Last week’s experience of visiting some of the settings for key events in A World Between Us was extremely powerful. It’s certainly a strange sensation to go to a real place for the first time after having imagined it so intensely and for so long. These are all places of real and terrible tragedies, yet hope and idealism are equally significant elements in their histories.   keep reading

‘This hospital is in a cave.   When Felix heard, she imagined a storybook kind of cave, where dragons lurk on piles of gold at the end of winding tunnels.  Theirs is a great horizontal gash in the rock face of a hillside, an unhappy open mouth.  But its roof is solid stone.  And it won’t be far from the fighting. keep reading

‘On the other side of the river, spirits are high. They’ve driven Franco’s forces from the steep hillsides outside Corbera.  But everyone knows Fascist reinforcements will soon arrive and it’s no surprise when the crash and boom of bombardments steps up a day later.  The men scan the skies, and wonder if the German and Italian planes have got the trick of breeding.  Nat sees fear rising in the eyes of lads who have not fought before, and he does his best to steady their nerves.

These rocky slopes give little reassurance.‘ keep reading