The Trail to Freedom: Lin Treadgold writes novel inspired by discovery of father's Second World War letters

If it wasn’t for the television show Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, writer Lin Treadgold might never have become a novelist.

Her late mother Veronica Twidle starred in the show as Olive and a conversation with its writer Ian La Frenais inspired Lin.

“I went along with my mum to the opening of the very last series of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet in Newcastle and I met Ian La Frenais. I told him I'd like to be a writer and he said: ‘Just do it. Don't hesitate. Just get in there and do it’. He said: ‘There's too many people procrastinating. If that's what you want to do, just do it’. And I never looked back since.”

That’s not the whole story, though, as Saltburn-born Lin became a novelist in a roundabout way – although she had completed a creative writing course in Leeds earlier in life, she went on to work for nearly 25 years as a driving instructor and then a trainer near Redcar.

But after taking early retirement and moving with husband Chris to the Netherlands, living in a village near the city of Schagen for around 15 years, she could really get to work writing.

She came back to the UK in 2015 and, now living in Devon, aged 76, she has released her third book, inspired by her Second World War veteran father Harry Twidle.

Harry was a Private in the 4th battalion of the Green Howards (Alexandra, Princess of Wales's Own Yorkshire Regiment), experienced Dunkirk, was captured in Africa and taken to a prisoner of war camp in Sulmona, Italy, where he was kept for three years.

“He was lucky, really, because an Italian prison camp wasn’t that bad as opposed to what could have been if he'd gone into Germany,” says Lin.

"But really, if you read between the lines, it's my dad's journey in the book but not his not his actual story or his words – although I have used some of his words in the novel, in the letters that he wrote back, because I felt that they added a little bit of the history into the book and just made it more authentic.”

It was actually his letters, sent home from elsewhere in the UK, France, Africa and Italy, which formed the basis of The Trail to Freedom.

Lin says: “My grandmother, she must have kept those letters and passed them down to my mum. They had them in a cupboard in a little black box, and they'd been squirreled away for many years.” But during the Covid-19 lockdown, Lin discovered “a piece of history”.

She says: “I had a record of where my dad had been during the war. I found these letters and read them through and I thought, my goodness, this is going to make a good novel. So I thought, well, rather than write my dad the memoirs - I couldn't really because I didn't know everything - I decided to make a fictional novel out of it and that's where that started.

“There was a treasure trove of information in the letters and I thought I could turn them into a World War Two romance novel.”

It follows the story of Harold and Ellie, who live in a Yorkshire seaside town until the war comes between them. After six years of global conflict and Harold’s traumatic experiences, he might not be the same man who left his beloved years before. Lin’s third book comes after Goodbye Henrietta Street in 2015 and The Tanglewood Affair in 2018.

Like many veterans, Harry, who died in 1995 aged 76, never told his daughter Lin about his war experiences, so she learned about them in later life.

Lin now lives in Okehampton, only a few miles from where her father was sent to a training camp before going to Weymouth, from where he travelled to France.

“There wasn't a lot happening in France at the time and then, suddenly, there was, because there was this corridor which they had to escape. The Germans were on both sides of this corridor and apparently, I'm told, that the fifth battalion of the Green Howards was keeping the Germans at bay,” she says, so the others soldiers “could get down to Dunkirk, and when they landed on the beaches… well, we've all seen the film Dunkirk – it was like that – and I've written about that in the book.”

What is it like to think that her father was involved in such historic events?

"It shocked me, really, because going back and speaking about it, I never knew anything about it until I read his war records. It doesn't say much, it just says ‘Dunkirk’. Then I did my own research with some of the guys that have written their accounts online, and I sort of took it from there and realised that this is what my dad had to go through.”

Of course, there were plenty of poignant moments during the course of her research. "I went to Moreton-in-Marsh for my for a holiday in the Cotswolds. There was a nice little museum there, opposite the caravan park where I was staying.

"I went in there and I said to the guy: ‘My dad was in Moreton-in-Marsh during the war. It would be nice to find out a bit more about it. He writes in one of his letters that he was eating bacon and black pudding in an old school room in the town. Do you know where the old school was?’ He said: ‘You're standing in it’.

“Tears rolled down my face, I couldn't believe it. I've had about four coincidences since I've been writing this and I sometimes think my dad would be very proud of the fact that I made an effort. For somebody to recognise what he did in the war.”

The Trail to Freedom by Lin Treadgold is out now. It can be bought direct from publisher SilverWood Books. Visit: lintreadgold.co.uk