Maggie Brookes

Their love is a death sentence. But can it keep them alive?

Czechoslovakia, 1944. In the dead of night, a farm girl and a British soldier creep through abandoned villages. Secretly married and on the run, Bill and Izabela are searching for Izabela's brother and father, who are fighting for the Czech resistance. They know their luck will not last.

Captured by the German army, it seems they must be separated - but they have prepared for this moment. By cutting her hair and pretending to be mute, Izabela successfully disguises herself as a British soldier. Together, they face the terrible conditions of a POW camp, reliant on the help of their fellow POWs to maintain their fragile deception.

Their situation is beyond dangerous. If Izabela is discovered, she and Bill - and all the men who helped them - will face lethal consequences.

1936. Civil war in Spain. A world on the brink of chaos . . .

21-year-old Lucy feels content with her life in Hertfordshire - not least because she lives next door to Tom and Jamie, two very different brothers for whom she has equally great affection.

But her comfortable life is turned upside down when Tom decides he must travel to Spain to fight in the bloody Spanish Civil War. He is quickly followed by Jamie who, much to Lucy's despair, is supporting General Franco.

To the dismay of her irascible father, Lucy decides that the only way to bring her boys back safely is to travel to Spain herself to persuade them to come home.

Yet when she sees the horrific effects of the war, she quickly becomes immersed in the lifesaving work the Quakers are doing to help the civilian population, many of whom are refugees.

As the war progresses and the situation becomes increasingly perilous, Lucy realises that the challenge going forward is not so much which brother she will end up with, but whether any of them will survive the carnage long enough to decide . . .

Alexandra Palace in North London was a ‘concentration camp’ for 3,000 civilian internees from 1915 to 1919. The prisoners at Ally Pally had English wives and children. Many owned businesses in Britain. Many had left Germany as children themselves, or had been born in England, and spoke no German. Only their passports made them ‘enemy aliens.’

This book combines their own words from letters and memoirs, with evocative photographs, plus full colour paintings by internee George Kenner and poems by Maggie Butt.

The passage of time is tangible in Maggie Butt’s latest collection. These poems use history, memory, work and travel as lenses to examine the inevitable pains and sharp pleasures at the heart of our transient lives.

A fully illustrated poetry collection, which proposes some alternative, imaginary saints, including the Patron Saints of liars, looters, rank outsiders, compulsive hoarders, old dogs and infidel girls. These undercover Patron Saints are illustrated by the staff and students of Middlesex University's BA Hons Illustration course, from famous and established artists to emerging talents.

Maggie's first full poetry collection.

Pamphlet.

'Here is a profound act of poetic, elegiac empathy, a love song to us all and to the earth we love, share and ravage. a mature, devastating and ultimately redemptive work.'' Jacqueline Saphra.