Helen Watts is a writer, editor and publisher. She has written a selection of short stories, non-fiction texts and poems for children and a wide range of teachers' resources. Helen is also the Schools Coordinator for the Stratford-upon-Avon Literary Festival.
She is married with two children, Jack (14) and Georgia (11), and lives on a hill near Stratford upon Avon, where she enjoys walking her golden retriever, Dexter, and looks after a range of other family pets including Humbug the hamster and an expanding colony of stick insects.
Taffy Thomas has a repertoire of more than 300 stories, collected mainly from traditional oral sources, which he is happy to tell in almost any situation. He is now the most experienced English storyteller, having performed in many countries on four continents.
In 2001 he was awarded the MBE for services to storytelling and charity. Taffy is a patron of the Society for Storytelling and is currently artistic director of Tales in Trust, the Northern Centre for Storytelling, based at The Storyteller's Garden in Grasmere. In 2013 he was named Outstanding Male Storyteller at the British Awards for Storytelling Excellence.
As the Great War raged, and in its aftermath, people created hundreds of legends and stories round it, to speak of the sadness, the heroism, the deaths. Author Helen Watts and storyteller Taffy Thomas bring together this compelling, moving collection of ghost stories and mysteries from both sides of the conflict, from the haunted U-boat to the ghost of the trenches.
a special collection
This...highly enjoyable collection of accounts gives us a new perspective on the war...It's a gem of a book which brings fresh ideas to discuss.
...readers of all ages will find something to delight them in its pages.The introductions only add to the enjoyment of these stories from the First World War, and demonstrate how stories can shine when retold by two such fine storytellers.
The stories are engagingly told. The tone...is perfectly in tune with the subject. The authors have obviously gone to a great deal of trouble to get the tone just right and...they have succeeded splendidly.