The Lonely Gotha

When Harold had to leave war torn, gloomy North London in the early years of the First World War, he had mixed feelings. Still mourning the death of his father on the Somme, Harold’s mother was taking him to live with her sister and uncle in the seaside town of Westgate-on-Sea, on the south-east coast of Kent. Harold remembered one previous visit, in the summer before the war, of squawking seagulls, striped deckchairs and a tiny cottage on the shore. A holiday was one thing, but what would living there be like, away from everything and everyone he knew?

After nearly 40 years as a teacher of English and special needs in a range of UK schools Ruth Burt noticed there were few fiction books for the 8–13 age range about the home front in the First World War. In 2018, at the centenary of the Great War she decided to write one herself to fill the gap. She set it in the area she lived because she realised the place was used by both the military and civilians alike in that period.