Authors - Why I write
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By: Marc on 01/06/2020 If You’re Reading This - Siân Price Sian is an award-winning television and radio producer whose credits include Time Team and Coal House. She has a BA in History from Warwick University and an MA in Film Archiving from the University of East Anglia. Sian say’s, I’m a TV producer by day but the idea for the book came from a Radio 4 documentary I made all about soldier’s farewell letters. The documentary was a simple montage of letters spanning centuries intercut with modern-day interviews from bereaved parents, psychologists, military personnel & historians. A publisher happened to be listening; tracked me down; and asked if there was a potential book in the material. I naively said yes & within weeks had signed a contract to write a book. Originally, it was only going to focus on WW1 and WW2. However, it soon became apparent that writing farewell letters had a much wider & longer history. In the end, I decided to focus on 9 different conflicts starting with the Napoleonic Wars through to Iraq & Afghanistan. The writing up was easy - that took about 6 months. The research on the other hand took years. I had to fit it in between the day job so it was a long 5 years gathering all the material together. Luckily so much archive material is accessible online now but I also tagged on research weeks to holidays in Australia & Tasmania and traveled the length & breadth of Britain. Record offices, libraries, military archives, museums, personal collections - no stone was left unturned in the pursuit of letters. Finding the farewell letter was almost the starting point for each story. Once I’d found that I then needed to work out why the person might have written it, who they were, and what reaction the letter had from loved ones. That took much more research into war diaries, regimental histories and tracking down living relatives. In dedicating chapters to different conflicts, the book also teased out different attitudes to going to war across the ages - something I hadn’t considered when I started the journey to write it. In the end the book is a poignant collection of individual stories that span different centuries, different conflicts, different ranks and different nationalities. I am still in touch with many of the families who shared their incredibly moving stories with me. The book I hope pays tribute to those who make the ultimate sacrifice. I hope it humanises war dead statistics by shining a light on individual stories and the effect death has on a family across many generations. Above all, I hope people take away the universal message that in the event of my death people just want to say I love you, I miss you, I’m sorry I’m not there any more. https://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/If-Youre-Reading-Thi…/p/3280
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