Recently, I have come across old diaries and letters written in India by my maternal grandparents in the 1920s and 1930s, where my granddad was a forester with the Indian Forest Service. Bob Gorrie had been a gunner in the First World War and survivor of trench warfare (one of the ‘mortar-mongers’ as he nicknamed them). He kept diaries of that ‘adventure’ too, but that’s a whole other story!
On his return to Scotland, he trained in Edinburgh at the University – there’s seems to have been a lot of rowing, tea dances and theatre trips in between lectures on tree species and Hindustani – Bob was relishing life post Flanders. There was a whirlwind romance with sophisticated Sydney Easterbrook (a wow on the dance floor) and then he was off to the Punjab, leaving his fiancee to follow a year later …
As a writer and researcher, I am absolutely hooked on my grandparents story – their life in India leaps off the page – and I’m drinking tea, marking trees, auctioning timber, riding under moonlight and playing ‘topping’ games of tennis alongside them!
Oh, yes – and I’m wearing a brooch made out of a tiger’s claw from a man-eating tiger that my grandfather shot and named Gwendoline …
My next novel – a sequel to the Tea Planter’s Daughter – is taking form and taking my characters back to India in the ’20s. Over the next few months I’ll share slices of that long gone era on this blog – with the help of Bob and Sydney.
Very interesting information Janet about your forbear in India. I’m really looking forward to your sequel to the Tea Planter’s daughter (my favourite book of yours along with Beatles & Chiefs – when is the sequel to that one expected?!) Keep up the good work.
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Thanks Carol! No plans for a sequel to Beatles & Chiefs in the near future – but the Tea sequel might be ready for the end of the year if I don’t get too distracted!
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Janet, I’m eagerly waiting for your book, because I’m also a daughter of Tea Planters; from Assam, India
And Tea is not only my profession but passion also
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Hello Suparna – lovely to hear from a real daughter of Tea Planters!
The book, THE PLANTER’S BRIDE, is now available in both print and ebook, so I hope you enjoy reading it.
Very best wishes
Janet
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