Posts Tagged ‘A WORLD BETWEEN US’

  1. New Blood for the Republic: the Spanish Civil War, eighty years on

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    September 6, 2016 by Lydia Syson

    80th anniversary commemorations and conferences have been taking place up and down this country as well as Spain to mark the Spanish Civil War, initiated by a right-wing military coup in July 1936, followed by Franco’s long dictatorship.  It’s a measure of just how involved Britain was in the conflict which many see as a rehearsal for World War Two.  Giving a paper myself about the evolution of my YA novel A World Between Us at the fascinating ‘Spanish Civil War in World Literature’ conference at London’s School of Advanced Studies, I mentioned the iBook edition which was put together in 2012 with the generous help of vast numbers of archives and libraries in the UK and US (thanks here). The image above of a young female anti-fascist donating blood to be sent to the front lines for wounded Republican soldiers was provided by the London School of Economics. The iBook keep reading


  2. February News: National Libraries Day and Ebook Special Offers

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    February 3, 2016 by Lydia Syson

    If you value your local library, this Saturday is the day to show your appreciation. Find out what’s going on near you here. Southwark residents like me have lots to celebrate, as our council has not only worked hard through the cuts to keep libraries open, but in Camberwell we’ve even got a brand new one, open seven days a week, and it’s glorious.  It’s hard to imagine a greater contrast to the dank, windowless basement that used to be Camberwell’s children’s library.  Things are very different just over the border in Lambeth, where half the keep reading


  3. Happy ‘Nu’ Year

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    January 6, 2016 by Lydia Syson

    My New Year’s resolution should possibly be to work out how to exert better control over my headline images on WordPress…In fact, instead of website improvement, I’ve been preoccupied with 1950s home improvement at The History Girls this month, where I wonder if that whole decade wasn’t one big cover-up.  The post – The Mastery of Knack – was inspired by a Christmas present, a copy of The Practical Householder of October 1956. keep reading


  4. UKYA Extravaganza

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    September 6, 2015 by Lydia Syson

    wXpiauM-_biggerI’m not sure if it sounds more like a circus or a speed-dating event for authors and readers, but I am absolutely certain that the second ever UKYA Extravaganza on October 2015 is going to be a sell out. If you live anywhere near Nottingham and want to come, do book as soon as you can. These events are all about bringing YA authors to fans outside London – read here keep reading


  5. A WORLD BETWEEN US reviews

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    April 19, 2015 by Lydia Syson

    Christmas book pick in The Observer , The Telegraph , The Morning Star & Radio Suffolk, Teen book club choice on The Guardian Children’s Book website, recommended as a ‘hot read’ on teen website SugarscapeHighly Commended for Branford Boase Award 2013, longlisted for The Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize 2013, shortlisted for WeRead Book Award 2013, longlisted for UKLA Book Award 2014 and Waterstone’s Children’s Book Prize 2013, nominated for the  CILIP Carnegie Medal, 2014.

    Please follow links for full reviews….

    A World Between Us is an outstanding debut novel for teenagers…what Syson captures so well is a sense of heartbreaking courage, comradeship and lost innocence…Thoroughly researched and beautifully written, for what I suspect is a keep reading


  6. Find out more about the background to A WORLD BETWEEN US

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    March 1, 2015 by Lydia Syson

    There have been about 15,000 books written in English about the Spanish Civil War – twice that many in Spanish, and more are published every month in Spain.

    Here I’ve listed some of the books that influenced me most keep reading


  7. Len Crome Memorial Lecture 2014: Taking Sides

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    March 2, 2014 by Lydia Syson

    The Spanish Civil War ‘gripped the imagination of a generation’, said Valentine Cunningham this weekend at Taking Sides: Artists and Writers on the Spanish Civil War.  To judge from the huge and variously-aged turnout at the event, not to mention the responses I’ve had from young readers of my own novel on the subject, it will continue to do so for several generations to come.   keep reading


  8. Wartime Christmas

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    December 22, 2013 by Lydia Syson

    Today’s war-themed window in the Carnegie 2014 Advent Calendar by We Sat Down is my inspiration for this final post of the year. Christmas in wartime tends to be peculiarly poignant – so often dark with separation, and haunted by the ghosts of past celebrations.  Ritual is disrupted, and hope can seem fragile.  Both That Burning Summer and A World Between Us include not scenes, but memories of Christmas. keep reading


  9. The Torch of History

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    August 30, 2012 by Lydia Syson

    For most of my life I’ve been as likely to pole-vault out of the garden as to sit down to watch the Olympic opening ceremony on television. The celebration of children’s books certainly softened my resistance to the occasion. And I enjoyed the glimpses of London in 1948 we had on our screens. And finally, I had time to watch – and get keep reading



“A mesmerising portrait of a family unravelling” THE TIMES (Best historical fiction in 2018)

“Powerful, intense and beautiful” HISTORICAL NOVEL REVIEW

“This tense, evocative, richly-imagined novel conjures the voices of a strange time and place, and makes them universal” EMMA DARWIN

“Syson brings history alive” THE OBSERVER

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