Description

WHAT HAPPENED

A short conversation with his elderly mother about the death of a relative he didn’t know started the author on a journey that would obsess him for nearly two years. Curiosity, as well as a fascination with Bomber Command and the Second World War drove him to ask who was this relative and why had he never known of his existence? How did he die, and why? And what was the link with a wartime RAF bomber station and the Polish bomber crews who flew from there? He would also come to ask deeper questions, not just about what happened over a Nottinghamshire village one summer during the war but more recently, about the break-up of his own family, and just what it was that was driving him to find answers.

Sometimes funny, often disturbing, always honest, What Happened is a book about loss, and acceptance, not only in wartime; it is about discovery and memory and how we create and tell stories about the past to make sense of our own present.