Ben Macintyre
Interview by Gavin J. Grant
Ben Macintyre's book, The Englishman's Daughter, tells a little-known story of a group of English soldiers trapped behind German lines in France, in World War One. The Great War, as it is still known more than 80 years later, exerts a massive pull on the national psyches of the U.K. and Europe -- and of the U.S., too, as is shown by the high level of interest in Macintyre's book.
We sent a few questions by email to Macintyre -- also the author of The Napoleon of Crime and Forgotten Fatherland -- who lives in London, and he was kind enough to respond:
BookSense.com: How many people involved in the story of The Englishman's Daughter did you get to speak to?
Ben Macintyre: Because the events described in the book took place so long ago, very few people from the time are still alive. Apart from Helene Dessenne, who was just six months old when her English father was executed, I found one elderly lady who had lived in the village, and an old man who, as a very young boy, had watched the execution from beneath a hedge.
However, one of the striking things about the story is how well is was remembered and passed on by people one, two, or even three generations later; many spoke as if the events had happened just a few weeks ago.
Before writing this book, were you much interested in World War One?
I have always been fascinated by World War One, an episode that still plays such a crucial part in British national consciousness. Far more Englishmen died in the first war than in the second, and almost every family, including my own, has at least one ancestor who fought and/or died in the Great War. I studied the period when I was at Cambridge University, and I read widely in World War I literature long before I stumbled across this tale.
How did you go about researching events that took place more than 80 years ago?
Thanks to a the peculiar local bureaucracy in that area of France, a vast trove of official documents and personal reminiscences has survived. Villagers were encouraged to provide their own accounts of war experiences, by dictation if they were illiterate, and these were carefully transcribed, stored in municipal archives and then almost entirely forgotten. These, together with oral accounts from the descendants of those involved, formed the core research for the book.
Did you realize very early on that the core of the book would be the betrayal of the soldiers?
No; it was not until I had been working on the book for nearly a year that it began to dawn on me that the men had been betrayed, rather than simply captured in the normal course of events.
Did writing this book bring up any other aspects of the war that you'd like to write about?
I'm not sure I would write about the Great War again, although it is a deeply fascinating subject. Much of the more obvious terrain has been well-tilled already, and I doubt I could find another story to match up to this one.
What are you reading?
I am currently reading memoirs of the First Afghan War of 1832, with a possible view to writing another book based on a diary I have unearthed from that period.
Are there any books you recommend?
John Keegan's First World War is, I think, the best single-volume account of the war; Lyn McDonald's reconstructions of the great offensives, based on individual soldiers' accounts, are very moving; the fiction of Pat Barker and Sebastian Faulkes is superb, and the poetry of Wilfred Owen still deeply resonant.
Author photo by Jerry Bauer.