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Back When We Meet Again Save as PDF
Chapters (57)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. Epigraph
  4. Prologue
  5. One
  6. Two
  7. Three
  8. Four
  9. Five
  10. Six
  11. Seven
  12. Eight
  13. Nine
  14. Ten
  15. Eleven
  16. Twelve
  17. Thirteen
  18. Fourteen
  19. Fifteen
  20. Sixteen
  21. Seventeen
  22. Eighteen
  23. Nineteen
  24. Twenty
  25. Twenty-one
  26. Twenty-two
  27. Twenty-three
  28. Twenty-four
  29. Twenty-five
  30. Twenty-six
  31. Twenty-seven
  32. Twenty-eight
  33. Twenty-nine
  34. Thirty
  35. Thirty-one
  36. Thirty-two
  37. Thirty-three
  38. Thirty-four
  39. Thirty-five
  40. Thirty-six
  41. Thirty-seven
  42. Thirty-eight
  43. Thirty-nine
  44. Forty
  45. Forty-one
  46. Forty-two
  47. Forty-three
  48. Forty-four
  49. Forty-five
  50. AUTHOR’S NOTE
  51. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  52. POPULAR BOOKS FROM THE ERA
  53. When We Meet Again
  54. A Conversation with Caroline Beecham about When We Meet Again
  55. Discussion Guide
  56. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  57. What’s next onyour reading list?

Much of the detail about London Zoo—or Regent’s Park Zoo, as it was often called—is based on real events, animals and people. It really was a miracle that the zoo survived as well as it did, and that it provided a respite for visitors and servicemen. I’ve used some of the animals’ real names as a way of honoring them, from the well-known ones such as Rota the lion, who was given to Mr. Churchill as a gift, and Peter the alligator, who was rescued from his Hammersmith home after a bombing raid and removed to the zoo for safekeeping, to the aardvark called Adolf and the axolotl named Mussolini.

As well as the institutions I mention in the Acknowledgments, I visited locations in Brighton, Bloomsbury, Fitzrovia, Primrose Hill and Chelsea, as well as London Zoo.

The “Gates,” or the Gateways Club in Chelsea’s Bramerton Street, really was a hub for LGBTIQ+ people to socialize during the 1930s and ’40s, and it has a fascinating history during wartime and beyond.

And while I didn’t make it to Book Row in New York, it is also an authentic location. Although it’s now reduced from seven blocks of bookshops to two, it’s still full of a million stories—and ink, dust and promises—and I can feel a research trip coming on!

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Once again, many fiction and nonfiction books have played key roles in my writing process, as well as libraries, museums and archives, and I’m indebted to each and every one of them and to all the individuals who helped. Among them were the State Library of New South Wales, the UK National Archives, the Museum of London, the Foundling Museum, the Brighton Museum & Art Gallery, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Metropolitan Police Heritage Centre.

I’m particularly grateful to Ann Sylph and Sarah Broadhurst, librarians at the Zoological Society of London, for opening up the magical and dusty world of their wonderful zoo. Thanks also to Wiktoria Uljanowska at the Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft, and to Mick Clayton, the print workshop manager at the St Bride Foundation, Fleet Street, London, for sharing his printing secrets and his wonderful demonstration, and to Dan Robertson, curator of local history and archeology, Royal Pavilion and Brighton Museum.