07/01/2024
Alice Winn meets up with the Guardian Newspaper to discuss her novel In Memorium, dealing with the illicit love affair between two teenage boys sent to fight in the horror show that was the First World War. Her book is on course to rate highly in the Waterstones Bookshops Book of the Year, announced before the Christmas book rush. Alice says "Male friends who are gay or bisexual were able to read what I’d written and give very generous pointers: “This specific thing wouldn’t be true to how I’ve experienced it...” I followed their advice to the letter, but I also read between the lines of literature from the time. The most helpful book was The Loom of Youth by Alec Waugh, Evelyn Waugh’s older brother, who was expelled from Sherborne after a homosexual incident. When he’s 17 on the way to war, he writes this novel about boarding school and there’s a lot of between-the-lines discussion of homosexuality and its unspoken rules [at the time]: if you’re popular, if you’re discreet and it’s after dark and you’re going to end up marrying a girl anyway, it’s OK to experiment a little bit."
