Buy all three novels for just £20.00

"Girl in a Smart Uniform" is the third book in the Schellberg Cycle, a
collection of novels inspired by a bundle of photocopied letters that
arrived at a small cottage in Wales in 1979. The letters give us
first-hand insights into what life was like growing up in Germany in the
1930s and 1940s.



It is the most fictional of the stories to
date, though some characters, familiar to those who have read the first
two books, appear again here. Clara Lehrs, Karl Schubert and Dr Kühn
really existed. We have a few, a very few, verifiable facts about them.
The rest we have had to find out by repeating some of their experiences
and by using the careful writer's imagination.

Clara will not be daunted. Her life will not end when her beloved
husband dies too young. She will become a second mother to the young
children who live away from home in order to visit a rather special
school. When life becomes desperate for a particular class of disabled
children growing up in Nazi Germany she takes a few risks. Is her
ultimate faith in the goodness of human beings a fatal flaw that leads
to her tragedy, or is her story actually one of hope?

Renate Edler loves to visit her grandmother in the house on Schellberg
Street. She often meets up with her friend Hani Gödde who lives nearby.
This year, though, it is not to be. Just a few weeks after a night when
synagogues are burned and businesses owned by Jews are looted, Renate
finds out a terrible secret about her family.

Buy all three for £20.00 

Writer’s in cafés: Gill James at The Art of Tea, working on Girl in a Smart Uniform

The Art of Tea in Didsbury village is my sort of place. I spent a pleasant afternoon there recently as I took a day’s leave. What does a writer do on a day’s leave? Sit and write of course. Busman’s holiday or what? Read more... 

The story in the letters

Well, I have now completed all of the edits though we still have to do something about widows and orphans in the finished text. We’ve really tightened up the letters, making them no more than one side long and containing just those details that add to the two other plots or give some important setting detail. It was one of those cases where less or more is needed.  We went for less. That is probably the right decision: the novel is now a more realistic length.

But what of that extraordinary story the letters tell?

The German girls’ story

I’ve decided that I needed to write another novel. I still need to represent that naïve German point of view and that is the story told by the class letter. The real class letter contains some fascinating detail but makes for dull reading. I’m now working on telling the story of four of those involved in the letters: the farmer’s daughter, the twin who does not get married, the girl who becomes an actress and the class teacher. They gradually become enlightened as the story goes on.

The Schellberg Cycle

I started with one story – then I realised I had to write Clara Lehrs’ biography.  I’m working on that now. I want to investigate the fanatic’s mind. How did they become like that? So I’m going to tell the story of  BDM leader who eventually see fit to warn Hani and the others about what is going to happen to the Hilfsklasse’s little school. Then as I worked on Clara’s story, I realise that Käthe Edler is an interesting enough character to have a book to herself. Now I have a fifth.

The books can be read in any order. Two are written for adults and the other three are teens / young adults. Once one has been read, the other should be of interest regardless of age. So we have in order of writing:

The House on Schellberg Street

Clara’sStory

The BDM Girl (working title only)

The Woman Who Nearly Shot Hitler

The Class Letter (working title?)

Will I ever get away from the first half of the 20^th Century?