New book

Mark Ryder-Jones promises a historical mystery with the publication of his new book The Tenant at Hidden Farm (Troubador Publishing, £9.49 paperback, £4.99 Kindle, available via Waterstones, Amazon, Blackwells and the Troubador website etc)

Mark, aged 72, who lives in Fernhurst, said: “The original idea behind the book came from my discussions with a commissioning editor of a Hachette Livre Group publisher.

“We agreed that the reading public had a continuing fascination with the profound changes that took place to British society during and after the First World War. I decided to make my next novel a historical mystery, set from the war's end into 1919.

“In The Tenant at Hidden Farm, demobilised army nurse, Ellen Shales leaves her military hospital to take on a private assignment, caring for Major Owen Altringham, the war-wounded, double-amputee son of the aristocratic owners of Darnley Hall and its Hampshire estate.

“Ellen's predecessor, an Irish nurse, Mary-Ann O'Connor, had drowned in a local river some months earlier in an apparent accident. Upon arrival, Ellen finds emotions in the war-depleted household are still raw after the sudden death. She is informed by serving staff that Major Altringham in particular grieves for his late nurse and is advised not to broach the subject with him.

“Working in the shadow of her dead predecessor, Ellen struggles to form a bond with her new patient. A nurse's role is to facilitate healing, and although Ellen does not realise it, there is a great deal more that is unhealed in the house than just her patient.

“As weeks turn into months, she sets about learning more of Mary-Ann's time at Darnley Hall and in particular the young Irish nurse's relationship with a young tenant farmer, little realising that what she uncovers will have a life-changing impact on those around her.

“I found using a nurse as the prime literary persona worked well. Drama can occur equally above and below stairs, and a nurse can find a place in both.

“A governess might live and eat upstairs, but with the children in the nursery or schoolroom and thus be rather isolated. A housekeeper would remain downstairs with the staff, possibly having a private room in which to eat if the workforce was large enough. A nurse can straddle both floors. She can work upstairs during the day, a silent witness to family debates and arguments, and, if the household staff are willing and they trust her, she can dine each night with them downstairs, exercising appropriate discretion when joining in discourse at table. The reader thus sees and judges through her eyes what is happening throughout the great house.

“I have set the novel in Hampshire, which I know well, having lived there while reading law at Southampton University, and now owning a house only a few miles from its border with West Sussex. I love the Hampshire countryside, its towns and villages as much as I do my home county of West Sussex – and choosing it enabled me to base Ellen's occupational past in the grand Victorian army hospital that had once stood at the coastal village of Netley on Southampton Water – sadly, destroyed by fire in the 1960s, apart from the chapel.

“The Royal Victoria Military Hospital was a building that, while under construction, was legitimately criticised by Florence Nightingale for its design flaws that put exalted aesthetic before patient welfare. Yet, because of its location at a major south coast port and the fact that it was the largest military hospital in the country at the time, it proved vital in taking Empire war-wounded from the hospital ships during the Great War.

“Major Owen Altringham's character was carved from a sadder aspect of my life. My father was a serviceman in the Second World War, a pilot in the Fleet Air Arm. After demobilising, he worked in the Lloyds Insurance Market in the City of London. When he was 31 years of age, and I was two, he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. He lived a further 14 years, during which time the house I shared with my parents was part-home, part-hospital and part-tenant accommodation since money was tight.

“Much of my father's personality is also Major Altringham's – the impenetrability of thought, suspicion of change, occasional sullenness that masked humour and generosity of spirit and, ultimately, the determination to confront and make the best of what fate had handed him.”