Jacqueline Winspear
Jacqueline Winspear
Jacqueline Winspear is a mystery writer, author of the ‘Maisie Dobbs’ series of books which explore the aftermath of World War I. She has won several mystery writing awards for books in this popular series...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionWriter
war thinking interesting
I often think it would be really interesting to take all of those who would wage war to the battlefield cemeteries, and say, explain yourself to the dead. Explain yourself to the dead!
military war men
As Churchill said about the Great War, and he said this in about 1924, that it was the first war in which man realized that he could obliterate himself completely. If you consider the way the whole world was impacted, 18 million people worldwide died, and that is taking into account military and civilian deaths: 18 million people. And it was the whole world, if you will. You know, many of those trenches were dug by Chinese. There are photographs of Chinese looking like they just came from China, with their hats and so on, digging the trenches, right from the beginning.
dream war men
But there are many men-and women-who do things in a time of war that they wouldn't dream of doing in peacetime, and all for the common good.
war past historical
What does anyone really know about the impetus to go to war? And so much is uncovered in hindsight. And there are aspects of even past wars that are only coming out now. Historians discover letters here, notes there, and look very carefully at different aspects of not only any conflict but any great historical event.
running queens war
If you look at the First World War, the Kaiser was actually, actively buying a lot of the armaments from Britain! in the years, in the run-up to the First World War. And I mean, there was a connection there. He was, indeed, Queen Victoria's grandson. You know, they were all related, all these royal families.
hope war thinking
in this great war [WWI] ... they had, all of them, on all sides, lost their freedom. The freedom to think hopefully of the future.
war thinking people
I think that one of the things that we all ask ourselves, whoever we are, is: who stands to make a lot of money out of this [wars]? And, certainly, it comes back to people like armaments makers, and so on and so forth.
war mean army
It was Harry Patch, who was the last living World War I veteran; and by veteran I mean someone who actually fought in the war, he didn't just happen to be in the army at that time, in the Great War. And when the Iraq War started, he was interviewed, and they said, well what do you think of this? And he said, in a very sad voice, "Well, that's why my mates died. We thought we were going to end all that sort of thing."
great
We talk about globalization today as if it's some great big new thing, that we've all just discovered. But there's really nothing new about it.
club dog favorite health husband local pool sit swim unwind walk
My favorite way to unwind is to go for a walk with my husband and the dog at the end of the working day, then we go to our local health club for a swim and to sit by the pool and read for a while.
certain history
I'm a storyteller; that is what I do. And I'm particularly interested in history; and in history of a certain era. But what is interesting for me is how many, how many things you see repeated.
ask characters moved people
Also the clothing, people often ask why I talk about what characters are wearing. And that's really important to me, because you have to have a picture of how people moved in their clothes.
moving interesting landscape
What's interesting to me, is a moving someone through time; in a way, history is part of my landscape. And it fascinates me that history can be so easily reflected in what happens today.
real hot toes
But to some extent, the whole aspect of Fascism was a real hot potato. Because so many of the aristocracy were enamored of the tenets of not only fascism but also of Adolf Hitler himself. And you know, that was treading on a lot of toes.