Today, I'm delighted to welcome Paul Rushworth-Brown to the #HistFicThursdays blog as part his Coffee Pot Book Club 's book tour. Today, meet Paul's new book The Lost Voices , and discover your next great read! Read on to enjoy an excerpt from this gripping book! First of all, let's meet the book... Some lives pass through history without leaving a trace. The Lost Voices is a work of historical fiction that brings to light those whose stories were never formally recorded—not because they lacked significance, but because their lives unfolded beyond the reach of power, authorship, and recognition. This is the story of ordinary people forced into extraordinary circumstances—individuals navigating a rigid social order shaped by obligation, fear, and quiet resistance. Here, survival depends as much on silence as on action, and choices are made not in moments of glory, but in private, under pressure, and with consequences rarely acknowledged. The novel explores how perso...
I've just got back from a week away hunting for ancestors. Yes, this might not be everyone's idea of a fun holiday, but Judith and I adventured around many churchyards and churches, looking for any names on stones or monuments which matched those already in our family tree. As well as taking photos of graves and monumental inscriptions, we also took pictures of the fonts where our ancestors were baptised.
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| The font in Aldeburgh, where countless members of our family were baptised |
But one of my favourite discoveries was when we visited a library and raided their Local History section. In one of the books we found the most random section about Thomas Hudson, a local tailor, who used to work sitting cross-legged on the floor. It's a trivial thing but, at once, I felt I knew him better. These apparently throwaway facts take a name on the page - or stone - and turn them into a real character.
Ancestors are a great place to start with character-building. My most recent writing has been Mariner Hawkes: Charity Boy, built on a number of people from the Aldeburgh branch of my own family tree. From research we've done into our family, I had a pretty good idea of what had been expected from the young men of the family, most of whom were educated at the Greenwich Hospital School (where the title "charity boy" comes from), and then either into the navies, any branch of what later became the Coastguard Service, or as a Trinity Pilot.
This isn't the only ancestor-inspired character I've inserted into my writing. Everyone comes from a family of intriguing individuals. Have a go at uncovering your own family tree and find the ancestor whose story you'd most like to bring to life. They could go on to be the star of their own adventure, or remain as a peripheral character whose full significance only you will know.
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