On the day the Second World War broke out, Frank White was a 12-year-old schoolboy in Manchester. On the day it ended, he was serving on a Royal Navy warship in the Indian Ocean. In 2013, he started to write this novel.

'What I wanted to do,' he says, 'was to capture that feeling of those times and remind people of what the country went through.'

'Fabulous, often funny . . . the authentic, freewheeling atmosphere of a time when all bets were off' Daily Mail

As Churchill and the nation face their darkest hour in 1940, a Lincolnshire village wakes up to a glorious summer's morning.

Following Dunkirk, the fate of the whole war will soon rest with the RAF and their desperate effort to win the Battle of Britain. If they fail, Hitler's next step will be invasion.

And as the scene comes to life before us over the next six months, this shadow of war will not disappear.

From the pub to the church, struggling single mother to the lady of the manor, the paper boy to a traumatised bomb disposal volunteer, this superb jewel of a novel portrays a community of people and weaves together their stories with passion, betrayal, intrigue and suspense.

There Was a Time is a triumph of the storyteller's art.

This edition includes a new Author's Note and additional illustrations by the author.

About the Author
Frank White was born in August 1927. He was brought up in Newton Heath, Manchester. He served in the Royal Navy in the Second World War. He had two novels published in the 1960s (including A Morse Code Set, published in this volume) and wrote plays for stage and radio, as well as a short book on the First World War. More than fifty years after his first book was published, he wrote There Was A Time, published to critical acclaim in 2017. Frank lived at Marshchapel, Lincolnshire, with his wife June. Frank died in December 2019.

Reviews
These fabulous, often funny stories have the authentic, freewheeling atmosphere of a time when all bets were off. * Daily Mail *
A wonderful read, packed with incident, colour and detail. * Telegraph *
The book captures the anxieties, heightened emotion and community spirit that marked this epoch-defining chapter in the nation's long and colourful history. * Yorkshire Post *
There Was a Time vividly evokes life in a Lincolnshire village in 1940. Elegantly written and with beautifully-drawn characters, this absorbing story, amusing and poignant by turns, tells of the impact of the last War on a small, close-knit community. -- Gervase Phinn
He writes beautifully - poignantly and with humour. * Telegraph & Argus *
White depicts unique, worried, caring individuals who it is not difficult to warm to and who are memorable. * Lincolnshire Life *
A tender evocation of a unique period in history * Sunday Mirror *



Book Information
ISBN 9781473650435
Author Frank White
Format Paperback
Page Count 352
Imprint Hodder Paperback
Publisher Hodder & Stoughton
Weight(grams) 240g
Dimensions(mm) 196mm * 128mm * 24mm