Exclusive interview with My Spring, Royal Times and Ordinary Lives author Jean A Stockdale and the memoir of her family’s lives in Sheffield.
Rating: Three Stars
By Gabrielle Pantera
“I discovered that my mother had kept a wartime diary through the Second World War which spanned 1939 to 1944,” says My Spring, Royal Times and Ordinary Lives author Jean A. Stockdale. “I got the idea [for the book] in the 1980s after my grandma told me her early life story. Around the same time as her death, my grandma and the Queen Mother were born. The idea formed to write about their lives in parallel. Events in their lives continued to match with them both losing someone close in the First World War, marrying in the same year and then both having a daughter in 1926.”
My Spring is the story of two daughters living parallel lives, one destined to be the Queen and the other to be the author’s mother. Stockdale’s descriptions are detailed and vivid. Some of the book is in diary form. You’re shown daily life, courting as well as photos. The book is biographical and evokes a feel for the past and sometimes simpler times. It might have been more cohesive had it been written in the first person, as though you were living it.
As we follow the upper class life of the royals and the more conventional life a family in Sheffield we see parallels between the two – but the big difference is money. Stockdale’s grandmother is the girl from the North who wore hand-me-down clothing. The royals? No so much. However, both girls marry in 1923. And later they both have daughters in the same year. They each had to deal with births, deaths and war.
“This is my first book as I work full time and have family commitments so I write in my spare time,” says Stockdale. She says her research included watching the films her mother mentions in her diary in order quote the storyline and familiarize herself with the stars of the day. Stockdale did a lot of research about both World Wars and read old books about the Royal Family. Stockton’s grandmother recorded in her diary the start of the year her parents began courting. “Also, my mother kept magazines, postcards and newspaper articles from the early 1950s which gave an insight into that era in terms of tips about courting, looking after your husband and having a baby,” says Stockton. “There were some good old fashioned advertisements, some of which are illustrated in My Spring.”
”The local newspaper, the Sheffield STAR, has featured My Spring in consecutive weeks which have included photographs and extracts from the book,” says Stockdale. “The newspaper office has a STAR Bookshop which is selling my book.” While My Spring has been serialized in print, it has not been optioned yet for film or TV.
Stockton has written poetry and some of her early poems are contained in the book. She is currently writing a sequel called My Summer, with more royal times and ordinary lives. “My Summer starts where My Spring ends and follows the parallel lives of the Queen and my mother,” says Stockdale. “I also write about my school and teenage life in comparison to the Queen’s children and what we are all doing at the same time.”
Stockdale was born and raised in Sheffield, England.
My Spring: Royal Times and Ordinary Lives by Jean A. Stockdale. Kindle edition, File Size: 1651 KB, Print Length: 128 pages, Publisher: Matador (April 5, 2013) Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc. Language: English, ASIN: B00C9FUOMS Kindle ebook $7.99.
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