Jennifer Ryan asked Jennifer Ryan:

How big a role did research play in writing The Chilbury Ladies' Choir?

Jennifer Ryan Research played a massive role in the book, and as a nonfiction editor I’m used to digging deep into material quickly to find facts, as well as organizing large quantities of researched information.
The day-to-day life of women during these times was incredibly hard. There were few labour-saving devices such as laundry machines and dryers, let alone central heating. Ready made food was yet to be invented, so all meals had to be made from scratch. The rationing and shortages made cooking even more time consuming. My grandmother had a dozen or so wartime recipes, which included: Lord Woolton Pie (a vegetable form of shepherd’s pie made specially for Lord Woolton by the head chef of the Savoy Hotel), mock banana (which was made from mashed parsnip mixed with sugar), and Pink Gin (my grandmother’s favorite cocktail, which was lethal mix of straight Gin with a splash of Angustura bitters.)
One of my favorite research tasks for Chilbury was interviewing people alive during the era. In an eye-opening way, most of the elderly women I interviewed remembered the war as one of the best times of their lives, recalling the new freedom and the work and responsibility, the feeling that you had to live for the day. One very old lady in her nineties decided that she simply had to demonstrate how to do that dance, “Knees Up, Mother Brown,” and I begged her not to as she struggled to her feet, clasped my arm, and began kicking her legs up one by one. Gripping hold of her as best I could, I had to laugh along with her. She couldn’t have been more delighted to relive the memories.

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