I always love reading a novel by Sebastian Faulks (see my blog on A Possible Life) so was looking forward to his new one Where my heart used to beat and it didn’t disappoint when I read it earlier this year. I was immediately drawn to the story – a middle aged and very self-contained man looking back to confront his experience in the Second World War in Italy. A letter out-of-the-blue from a stranger who knew his father in the First World War takes him away from a grey London to an island off the coast of France. Here he finds out about his father’s history, whilst also coming to terms with his own past.

My grandfather talked to me a lot about his war in Italy and I’ve since read a number of books trying to understand this part of the Second World War in Europe (see my blogs on Italy’s Sorrow and With Alex at War), which is often overlooked in war novels and films. This made Where my heart used to beat one of Faulks’ novels that I have enjoyed the most.

My grandfather is in the middle of the back row in this photograph taken during the Second World War.