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Hosted by JT Crowley
British Author JT Crowley is talking books with international authors online and on screen. These video chats will reveal the stories and characters as they are built from the ground up. Join JT and his guests to take the journey of engaging audiences through writing and story-telling.
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The Author
Anne Angelo was born in 1911 in Invergordon, Ross Shire (now Ross and Cromarty) Highlands, Scotland in what can only best be described as a difficult family set up. As a child she grew up in an environment of hatred, dejection, fear and other social dissent. life was hard back then in a society where children and young adults were to be seen, not heard and certainly not to be believed. Anne’s dream was to be a pharmacist, but a ruthless father blocked that opportunity by refusing her to go to Edinburgh to sit her pharmacy examines, instead opting for marrying her off. Thank goodness times have in many ways changed. As a young woman Anne’s life was fortuitously driven by events beyond her control, the war years of the second world war like for all that lived through those times were extremely tough. In 1944 Anne gave birth to Hugh who I have the privilege of talking to about the books she wrote, he recalls his mother typing the manuscript in London in 1949, just before they left for New Zealand in 1950, followed by upping sticks again to Australia in 1959 following Hugh’s father’s death. Over the years Anne worked on and off the manuscripts with the aid of a ghost writer, tragically Anne passed away in 1999, so the scripts lay untouched until lockdown in 2020, when Hugh rediscovered the files and decided to get them published in memory of his late mother Anne.
Check out our video chat here!
The Book
The Forbidden Zone 1940
This book is a continuation of the story of Anne Angelo’s experiences in the war years of the nineteen forties. Anne’s return to Lille in France, the ‘Phony war’ when she almost got killed driving ambulances. A romance with a dashing British Army Officer to whom she gave a sprig of white heather as a good luck memento. The romance was brief as the Germans invaded and closed the area as they prepared their invasion of England. Anne joined the French Resistance until she was betrayed to the Gestapo, she escaped home to Britain, where the dashing young Army Officer tracked her down with the sprig of white heather firmly in his grasp. Anne married the dashing British Army Officer who is Hugh’s father.
The book comprises thirty chapters of stimulating stories, some romantic, some hard-hitting and others simply telling what life for Anne was like in those days. It’s cleverly written, the pace and the tension are wonderfully balanced as the narrative reflects what people of that era had to endure, face and overcome. Every day was a battle to survive and only those lucky and strong-minded enough like Anne came out the other end.
Awards
The Forbidden Zone 1940
This Book has received five awards: Brew Book Excellence Award, Indies Today Award, Bookfest Book Award, Pencraft Book Awards and Readers’ Choice Book Awards.
A sprig of White Heather and a Scottish Lass
This Book has received seven awards: American Writing Awards, Indies Today Award, Brew Book Excellence Award, Bookfest Book Award, Readers’ Choice Book awards, Pencraft Book Awards and The Bookfest Honourable Mention Non-Fiction Award.
Other Books by Anne Angelo
A Sprig of White Heather and a Scottish Lass
This is the first part of the story of Anne Angelo, Hugh Hyland’s late mother. It’s a soul-stirring narrative told over twenty-one chapters, sublimely written depicting a life that faced innumerable, exacting and formidable circumstances that would have tested any person’s resolve. The issues and scenarios are delicately portrayed with a real touch of realism that makes you stop and think how people in difficult and testing situations make their mark. The book touches upon cultural and social background stigmas, educational, hereditary and race differentials all against a backdrop of hatred, heartache, fear, disenchantment and dejection, much of which Anne Angelo had to endure as a child and young adult. Anne had several blissful years living in France and touring in Europe and North Africa those years though where abruptly ended by the onset of WW2. The war years and the ensuing years had a profound impact on Hugh’s late mother as she rebuilt a new life for herself, a life so very different to that of her childhood, a life on the other side of the world. What of that life! Well, I’m not going to tell you, find out by seeing what she has to say.
The Podcast
This podcast is available to listen to on all major social podcast platforms search Talking Books by J T Crowley. The video is available on YouTube search Talking Books hosted by J T Crowley and now on the Roku and Amazon Fire Stick streaming devices. Download the Experts and Authors app on your television or visit https://www.Expertsandaothors.tv online and click TALKING BOOKS.
Publisher
Xlibris
www.xlibris.com/search/bookstore -Anne Angelo.
Hugh, thank you, for giving me the second opportunity to talk to you about your late mother’s books.
I was born on a warm summer’s evening to Irish immigrants. My father was born in Ireland under British rule, he kept British citizenship, which allowed him to join the British Royal Air Force and follow a career in aero engineering at Rolls Royce in Derby. My mother was actually born in Manhattan New York but after the tragic death of her father when she was just seven months old led her mother eventually having remarried several years later to return to Ireland, it was there on the wild west coastline my mother spent much of her childhood.
In August 1957 my parents married and settled in Derby where my brother and I along with our late sister grew up. On reflection we weren’t particularly financially well off but there again nor where the kids that we grew up with, so we were non the wiser. However my parents instilled in us to respect others and to do things with our lives that they weren’t able to do.
When I was at school I excelled in Geography looking at all the different places in the world. So I suppose it was that geographical background coupled with wanting to achieve things that my parents weren’t able to do so, that set me on my worldly travels.
The excitement of travel coupled with the allure of seeing different cultures especially the many facets of kid’s lives in those places in contrast to my own narrow childhood inspired me to write the book. I want kids to see beyond their own streets and their smartphones and I hope that when they’ve read the book they will start to see that different kids from dissimilar places in the world live and experience contrasting lives and some of those lifestyles can be defined as harsh. But above all I hope it inspires some of my young readers to follow in my footsteps and witness life in all its forms.
The one thing that I’ve learnt in life is that theory in itself is fine but putting that theory into a practical form like a book is somewhat different. I suppose what I’m trying to say here is having an idea for a book and actually writing it and promoting it to the public is a far cry from the initial notion. So what made me take the leap from the first mental pictures to transferring them to words on a page that kids and adults alike can read any where in the world, well that hawks back to my parents encouragement wanting me to achieve things they couldn’t.
As a child writing never came easy to me, and when I look back at some of the letters I wrote to my parents from boarding school I can only hang my head in shame. I suppose being a boy more interested with what was going on in the school playground rather than the classroom would lead my mother who was by then an English teacher to tearing her hair out, the look of despondency written on her face as she tried to get me to read a single page of a book only to hear me begrudgingly recite a page in front of her and asking having got to the end of the page, ”can I go now.” Little did I know then that not having the ability to read and write properly would set me back in life, something I later rectified. So kids you can change but go and see the world in all its beauty, and don’t forget respect all nations.