Sampler containing extracts from Sampler produced for Cityread London 2014

Produced for Cityread London 2014

Moving between London, Paris and the trenches of Ypres, My Dear I Wanted to Tell You is a deeply moving

and brilliant novel of love and war, and how they affect those left behind as well as those who fight.

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Louisa Young said: “I am so pleased that My Dear I Wanted to Tell You – a very London book – has

been selected as London’s Cityread for 2014. I hope it will help to remind Londoners of the effect of

the war on the city and on Londoners themselves. A hundred years after the First World War, let’s

remember the fighters, the victims, the services and the families, with gratitude and love and, in their

memory, with a commitment to PEACE.”

by Louisa Young

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Every April, Cityread unites thousands of lives through literature placing a book at the heart of the greatest city on earth. We warmly invite you to be part of Cityread London 2014 by reading My Dear I Wanted to Tell You by Louisa Young, by joining us at a Cityread event in your local library, and by sharing your thoughts online with Londoners from across the capital. There are opportunities to meet the author at the British Library on 14 April and at Swiss Cottage Library on 29 April. Or you can explore London’s First World War heritage at the Cityread Family Day at the Museum of London Docklands on 5 April.

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From film screenings to writing workshops, there are hundreds of Cityread events taking place throughout April. Find one near you at www.cityreadlondon.org.uk/events, and tell us what you think on facebook/cityreadlondon and Twitter @cityreadlondon Cityread London 2014 was created by Stellar Libraries CIC and is delivered in partnership with all 33 London library services and HarperCollins Publishers. It is supported by the National Lottery through the Heritage Lottery Fund and Arts Council England.

‘Every once in a while comes a novel that generates its own success, simply by being loved. Louisa Young’s My Dear I Wanted to

Tell You inspires the kind of devotion among its readers not seen since David Nicholls’ One Day’ The Times

‘Birdsong for the new millennium’ Tatler

‘Full of drama, betrayal and addictive real-life detail’ Red

‘Beautifully realised’ Daily Express ‘This is a moving and powerful novel, one you’re not likely to forget’ Choice

Praise for My Dear I Wanted to Tell You

Also by Louisa Young

FictonBaby Love

Desiring Cairo

Tree of Pearls

Non-FictionThe Book of the Heart

A Great Task of Happiness: The Life of Kathleen Scott

coming soonThe Heroes’ Welcome

read history at Cambridge University. She is the author of ten previous

books. She lives in London with her daughter, with whom she co-wrote

the bestselling Lionboy trilogy.

www.louisayoung.co.uk

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© R

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The Borough PressAn imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

77–85 Fulham Palace Road,Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2011This edition 2014

1

Copyright © Louisa Young 2011

Louisa Young asserts the moral right tobe identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this bookis available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. Some characters (or names) and incidents portrayed in it,while based on real historical figures, are the work of the

author’s imagination.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may bereproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,

in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior

permission of the publishers.

Find out more about HarperCollins and the environment at www.harpercollins.co.uk/green

LOUISA YOUNG

My Dear I Wanted to Tell You

My Dear Bfmt.indd 5 04/11/2011 11:46

LOUISA YOUNG

My Dear I Wanted to Tell You

My Dear Bfmt.indd 5 04/11/2011 11:46

Excerpts from

9

Flanders, August 1917.

Purefoy was walking to the clearing station for

injured soldiers. Captain Fry saw him where

the planks made a crossroads, by the flooded

battlefield graveyard. Three wooden crosses

rose grimly, like King Arthur’s sword, from the

strangely smooth water. One was crowned with

a bleak skull. The rest of everything was mud

and death – and had been for weeks.

‘Can you walk?’ Fry called. Fry was a dental

surgeon in reality. ‘Good man. Keep your head

forward!’

Purefoy didn’t hear him but it didn’t matter.

He knew he had to keep his head forward.

The mud clung to his boots, weighing down

every step, but his legs were strong and the way

was obvious. Follow the duckboard planks west

to the giant burnt tooth stump which was all

that remained of the city of Ypres.

Purefoy swung his arms. Inside his head was

very hot, and he was thirsty.

The disorder around him was no worse than the

horror of yesterday or the day before; it was the

10

same chaos. Flat slimy going. Mud of blood. Blood

of mud. Oh yes. We are all poets here, he thought. He

closed his eyes for a moment but inside his head was

noisier even than outside, red and black, shooting.

No-one spoke to him.

He spoke to no-one.

He didn’t know which noises were real.

Trudge on. He wanted to undo his tunic jacket

but there was something on it, wet.

Undo his tunic? Dear God, Captain, what are

you thinking? Standards!

In his tunic pocket were seventeen beautiful

letters and Ainsworth’s prayer.

There were flies all around. I’m not for you

yet, boyo. He wanted to shake them off but his

head wouldn’t shake. He wanted to wipe his face

but his hand wouldn’t go there. He wanted to

swallow. He wasn’t sure who had bandaged him

but oh the beautiful sky.

Courage for the big things, patience for the small.

Trudge on.

Through struggle to the stars … Per ardua ad astra.

His mind raced … Struggle to the casualty

11

station. The station. Victoria Station. Paddington

Station, for Pewsey, for the Downs. Wild orchids

tiny as bees. Tiny purple leopardskin bees. Lying

among the eggs and bacon. No, they’re not called

eggs and bacon really. The brain-clearingly clean

air up there. And sheep-cropped grass, mossy and

soft. Rabbit pellets. Tiny when you’re lying down.

Bit damp still, isn’t it? Never mind, you can lie on

my coat. Tiny little plants. Vetch. Her beautiful

flesh. And the glory of sliding in.

‘Steady on, sir …’

‘You need a hand there, sir?’

Trudge on.

Something very dreadful happened today.

What, more dreadful than every day? He’d heard

somewhere that, as long as a man can mock

himself, he knows he is sane. Ah well. I’m still

not mad then. Something to be grateful for. But I

am walking through the valley of the Shadow of

Death. Don’t frighten the horses. Horses wallowing

in sinkholes of mud. Half a horse up a tree, head

shredded, legs as if it were rearing in empty air. A

grisly fairground ride.

12

And how does a rod and staff comfort me? Isn’t a

rod a staff? Or will God’s butler comfort me? God’s

Barnes. The Barnes of God. God’s Mrs Barnes,

come and take my coat. Will his housemaids give

me tea and say, “Never mind, Purefoy, sit down.

It’s not so bad.”

And the others. Sweet Jesus, the others. Sweet

Jesus - the men, the boys, the lads.

Yea, though I trudge.

What had happened? Purefoy didn’t know. He

hadn’t died. He might die yet.

The great city of Ypres stood before him. It

was craggy, empty, a vast, dark cavern. On its

once-protective walls, sharp pieces of remnant

masonry pointed upwards to God, like accusing

fingers. One or two looked like they were

shouting at the sky.

*

He stood for a while propped up against the

make-shift wall by the canal, waiting his turn.

There was a surprising little burst of clover,

13

just by his nose. It was growing from between

some hulks of grey material. Concrete, water-

logged sandbag, baked mud? He didn’t know

which. The metal doors to the dugouts open

and slam shut again. Open and slam shut

again. A little further along, the gas gong goes.

The noise seeps into Purefoy’s mind and fills

in any gaps. The doors slam. He can’t turn his

head but he can tip it a little. He can see the

graveyard, and the ambulance. Graveyard or

ambulance? Ambulance or graveyard? He hears

men shouting. He leans back and looks at the

little burst of clover. Leans forward again.

The doors clang open for him. He is propelled

in, glanced at, labelled, sent out. Ambulance –

not graveyard.

I was a soldier. Now I am the walking wounded.

I am hardly in pain. You’d think I would be. You

never know, do you?

He was glad Nadine was in London. He

wouldn’t want her nursing him.

*

14

The bouncing and jolting of the ambulance

made some of the men cry out in pain. Purefoy

held on, trying to keep everything still. The driver

was a girl. He stared at her. Her face was big and

tight, with pink cheeks and pale eyebrows. There

was pale down on her cheeks, and her mouth

was small. She was smoking and talking to

herself firmly under her breath, concentrating.

He liked her.

One of the men was saying: ‘So he told me, he

saw a hat, flat on the mud. An Australian one,

cavalry. And he didn’t have an Australian one,

so he reached out to get it, and he could reach

it but he couldn’t get it. So his mate pulled at it

too and they realised, blimey, it’s still attached.

Someone’s wearing it. So they got a firm grip and

they pulled and got the fella’s face out. And they

wipe his face and he’s alive. And they say, “Hold

on there mate, we’ll get you out.” And he says,

“It’s not just me, boys, I’m still on my horse.”’

A young lad was crying.

A dark tattooed man, with pus and gangrene

seeping through the mermaid on his forearm, said:

15

‘I heard that before.’

The first man told the story again, exactly the

same, word for word.

Purefoy was unloaded from the ambulance

and left to stare at the new scene. There were

women in big white hats like windmills. There

was mud still – but it was dried out and it was

not winning. It was being ignored. He waited.

He was propelled into a tent. What a lovely great

big canvas. He waited.

*

Somebody unwrapped the bit of field bandage

from around Purefoy’s face.

He was still young. He still had his shorn black

curls, handsome crooked nose, wide flat cheeks,

the eyes that girls like. Below these features,

his tongue flopped out, huge, straight down,

unrestricted, unhindered by chin or jaw, to his

collarbones. His mouth gaped. It was as empty

as a house with its front wall bombed off, the

interior smashed and open for all to see. At the

16

back of his mouth, his epiglottis dangled like a

left-behind light-fitting in the suddenly revealed

back room.

Someone photographed Purefoy. Above his

lips, he looked mad and shocked – like a fierce

barge convict fighting over a dispute at a lock, a

fairground man, a boxer, a foreigner. Below, there

is this ragged blossoming crater, gushing obscenely.

They washed the void, and dressed it, and tied up

what there was to tie. Someone made a hole in his

tongue and threaded a wire through, with a block

of wood hanging on the end. A cardboard label was

taken from a drawer and pinned to his uniform:

date of wound, destination, and instructions that

he must be kept sitting up. They injected him with

morphine and salt solution, marked an X on his

forehead, and gave him a small card.

He filled in the gaps with a short pencil.

To: Nadine.

Date: (He stared at that one. How could he

possibly know? The nurse wrote it in for him.)

August 21.

Injury: He crossed out serious.

17

He left the next one blank.

‘You’re meant to put the truth,’ said the nurse,

gently.

He glanced up at her from under his hooded

eyelids. I dare say, he didn’t say.

He signed: Riley Purefoy.

Bayswater, London, September 1917.

Riley’s field card to Nadine arrived at Bayswater

Road on a very warm morning. The butler,

Barnes, brought it in to Jacqueline with breakfast.

She read it, of course, and then put it down on

her tray with annoyance. Why has he sent this to

Nadine? Why not to his mother?

‘What’s that, darling?’ Robert said from behind

his Daily Chronicle. He said he read it for the

reports from Russia but Jacqueline thought he

was developing political sympathies. So far his

interest in the war had been limited to irritation

that people didn’t want to listen to Schubert,

because he was German. He thought it was

obvious to anyone with ears that his music was

18

perfect for cheering everyone up. Lately, however,

Robert had been growing excited. ‘Perhaps

communism might be a good thing?’ he had said.

‘Well it might!’

‘Riley Purefoy’s been wounded,’ she said.

‘Is he all right?’ Robert said.

‘Well I shouldn’t think so, darling, if he’s been

wounded, would you?’

Robert said nothing.

‘Well, it doesn’t say. Only that it’s slight. So I

suppose it is.’

‘Hope he is all right,’ Robert said. It didn’t

occur to him to ask why or how the information

had reached his wife, and for that she was glad.

She would prefer him to have no opinions on

the matter, because she had quite enough of

her own. So many young girls – and women

old enough to know better – were going quite

mad, sex-mad. Not Nadine, of course. But. Well

actually, Nadine might be sex-mad for all I know.

She hasn’t told me anything for months.

But she is not going to be marrying Riley Purefoy.

She needs help from her mother now to do the

19

right thing. If and when, dear Lord, this war ends,

she must be … emotionally safe. A woman’s safety

depends on who she marries – haven’t I – and my

mother – proved that?

Nadine is not going to become a war bride. She

is not going to marry in haste and repent at leisure

because of her wedding to a wounded, dashing

nobody. Even if the wounded dashing nobody is

Riley.

She ate some toast, not even bothering to be

sad about the ridiculous smallness of the piece

of butter Mrs Briggs had given her, and looked

at the paper. All bad. Dreadful. She turned the

page.

Damn! If his card has come here, does that mean

I’m going to have to write to Mrs Purefoy?

Jacqueline decided to ignore the whole thing.

It wasn’t a bad wound. It wasn’t her business.

‘Of course darling, we all hope he’s all right,’

she said.

Subject closed.

*

20

A week later, a letter arrived from Mrs Purefoy.

Dear Mrs Waveney,

I do not know if you would have heard but Riley

has been injured and is at the Queen’s Hospital

in Sidcup, Kent. I am so grateful he is out of the

way of further harm but, having not seen him

yet, we don’t know how bad it is. I wanted to let

you know as you have meant so much to him in

earlier years.

Yours faithfully,

Bethan Purefoy

Jacqueline felt guilty – a bit of a heel. But she still

wasn’t going to tell Nadine. She hadn’t sent on

the card, and she wouldn’t send on the further

news. It was her duty to protect her daughter

from a very attractive boy in very dangerous

times. The most unlikely girls were getting into

trouble. Not everyone could be a free spirit.

However, the butler, Barnes, noticed the arrival

of the card. He noticed too that it was still there

on Mrs Waveney’s bed-side table ten days later.

21

He had read it, feeling the usual flicker of envy

and resentment that Riley provoked in him. He

noticed Mrs Purefoy’s letter too. His eyesight

had not been good enough for the army but

there was nothing wrong with it that day.

Barnes had felt the changing of the times

around his dull and steady life. He and Mrs

Barnes had had some little conversations about

it, discussed some possibilities, some of his

dreams for later on, should circumstances allow,

involving savings, the south coast, and a small

bed and breakfast. And he felt quite strongly that

these people shouldn’t be allowed to get away

with thinking they could run other people’s

lives. On the eleventh day he slipped the card

and the letter into his pocket, readdressed them

over tea in the kitchen, and slipped them into

the letterbox on the corner of Queensway.

The Queen’s Hospital, Sidcup, September 1917

Captain Purefoy was one of several arrivals

that day, all of them underfed, exhausted,

22

stinking and pus-faced. He was unravelled from

his bandages and stripped and cleaned; the

wholesale cleansing of both the man and the

wound. Rinsing, sluicing and drainage, carbolic

soap and clean pyjamas. The starting of the

process of putting to rights. Packing, repacking.

Tying and binding, temporary splint supports.

Holding him together until impressions could

be made for a more accurateand permanent

repair. Discussions, plans, surgeons, doctors,

nurses, orderlies, volunteers.

The young man who had been part of the

system of destruction now became the object

of reconstruction. He who must destroy had

become he who must be mended.

*

He wanted to swallow. He tried to move his

swollen tongue. They’d taken the bloody weight

off it, thank Christ. But there was new stuff in

his mouth. New alien stuff.

It took a little effort to control the line of

23

thought. He made the effort, and failed.

He could hear that he gurgled when he

breathed. He started coughing. Kind of coughing.

There was always liquid, not saliva exactly, but a

combination of whatever it was, and dried out

by the antiseptic taste.

It seemed best to go back to sleep.

*

He wanted to swallow.

Coughed and gurgled.

Pain, actually – not much. But the wrongness.

A lot of the sense of wrongness. He knew his

head was wrong. What about the rest of him?

Itch by his eye – he scratched.

Opened his eyes. Light, white, alarming. Closed

again. Hospital, of course.

Did I let them down?

Scratched again. Hands were all right. He

opened and closed his fingers, valuing them.

Well. He ran an inventory. Hands, legs, arms,

feet. Torso. Dick? He tightened the muscles that

24

could make it bounce. Was it there? Have I not

thought about this before? Is my brain shaken up?

Yes, it was there. And would it still work?

Ha ha.

Self mockery. So he was sane. I’ve had that

thought before.

What happened?

I don’t remember.

What did I do?

I don’t remember.

Did I let them down?

*

I didn’t die.

I suppose I should open my eyes.

He didn’t.

*

His mind and his thoughts were like a dangerous,

sucking bog. The words emerged and sank

again, stretching and pulling away. They meant

25

nothing to him. He closed his eyes: the black and

the scarlet, the shooting stars, the sunflowers.

Opened them: the blank white calm, the polite

living people, the words muffled in glass.

Closed them again.

‘Plenty of rest,’ said the doctor. ‘Keep him well

fed. No visitors.’

This is where I am.

He dreamed of shells lighting up the sky with

fireworks of stars, still looking beautiful, high

and silent. Starry starry night. The starshells

became the painting, and he was with Sir Alfred

at the Grafton Galleries, and everyone was saying

Oh no, oh no, oh no …

*

A nurse woke him – intelligent-looking, with a

dry look and bony hands.

‘Lunch,’ she said. ‘Lovely egg flip. Sit up for me,

would you?’

He sat up.

She held his head, found the gap in his bandages,

26

and washed out his mouth – Do I have a mouth?

– with a big rubber syringe. She tipped the waste

into a kidney basin, white enamel, white gauze –

I am fucking helpless here – and wiped his – what

there was of a mouth. What is there? She cleaned

him up. Tipped his head back – I have a neck – so

he stared up at the ceiling, and poured the slop

slowly, delicately, as best could be done from the

spout of the drinking cup into the throat.

Why am I being fed like a fucking baby?

He coughed. Kind of.

*

Scraps came back to him. Not the battle, or the

getting of the wound, but him on a train, smelling

his own infection; tasting his own wound. The

taste of his own dying flesh in his own mouth.

Throwing up, at a casualty clearing station, in

ambulances, on trains, on a boat? Delirium

separated by bouts of vomiting. How kindly

everyone had tended to him. His head wrapped

in bandages. The bloody weight hanging from

27

his tongue to stop him swallowing it.

Now he tasted of something drying, alcoholic.

‘Don’t you worry, old fellow,’ someone had said.

Surgeon? Australian voice, or New Zealand.

‘We’ll fix you up. You’re in the right place, and

you’ll be all right by the time we’ve done with you.’

He was all right. He had walked. He had,

hadn’t he? He had got through the mud – a

giant cowpat studded with corpses. He had stayed

on the duckboards, past the trees – gaunt, dead,

black, burnt, wet stalagmites ... beyond a tank –

up-ended like a shipwreck, great stern up in the

air, like a tufty duck on the Round Pond.

‘Tufted duck’, Mum said. Tufty duck’, he

insisted. Tufty duck, tufty duck. Lovely little

tufty ducks, with their bright yellow eyes like the

rings you stick on round the holes in a piece of

file paper.

All that he remembered. He remembered his

name, and – three wooden crosses upright in a

pool of dirty water.

There was something else. Oh, there was plenty else.

He couldn’t remember what had happened.

28

He didn’t know how he had been wounded. He

didn’t seem to be able to talk. Not dumb like

shell shock. (Officers don’t get hysterical. They’re

too dignified – who had said that? Oh, Ainsworth.)

It wasn’t psychological – all in his mind. He just

didn’t seem to have the equipment.

*

He dreamed he was making mayonnaise with

Jacqueline Waveney. She didn’t believe any

Englishwoman could add the olive oil correctly.

Drip, drip, drip, so as not to curdle the egg yolks.

The yellowness turned into Sir Alfred’s yellow

oil paint. The swirl, the oil. And the sunflowers

of Van Gogh. In the old days they used egg yolks

for a type of paint. Country egg-yolks for

robust complexions; city egg-yolks for pale

ladies and saints.

She’d let Riley do the olive oil dripping. Found

it funny that he was interested.

‘What are you going to do when you grow up,

Riley?’

29

‘Painter like Sir Alfred,’ he’d said, and she’d

laughed. ‘Or a cook?’ he’d said.

She laughed at that too.

*

Riley stared at the nurse to make her look at him.

She looked. Handsome eyes, she thought.

He lifted his arm and moved his hand in a

writing motion, like an officer asking for the bill

in a Parisian cafe.

‘Pen and paper?’ she asked.

He blinked.

She was pleased. He wanted to talk to her.

He wrote:

I assume I’m in hospital.

I must be. I tasted the egg. It was real. And she’s

still here.

‘You are,’ she said. ‘The Queen’s Hospital in

Sidcup.’

England!

30

He wrote:

Will I die?

‘Of course, in the end,’ she said. ‘But not of this.’

He liked her for that. He wrote:

Thanks.

‘You’re welcome,’ said Rose.

He wrote:

How long?

‘Since you arrived? A week,’ she said, and she

smiled, and said: ‘I’ll get the doctor. He can

explain.’

Chelsea, September 1917

The card, when it came. The news it brought.

Those words that were not his. His words filling

in the gaps. The card that he had touched. The

31

fact of him on the same land as her. That he

couldn’t be hurt any more now, that he was here.

And she could go to him … It filled Nadine with

a flooding energy, a magnetic, panicky feeling.

And a sense of being hurled towards him: a

physical propulsion. Reason left her mind. No

thought at all, other than ‘be with him’.

Sister recognised it, and granted her leave. One

day, in a month’s time. Nadine had physically to

restrain herself.

‘Take it easy,’ said Jean. ‘He’s in the best place.

He’ll be getting better all the time.’

‘Can’t,’ said Nadine. Her breath was quick and

tight all the time, and her knee flickered when she

sat. So many still coming in from the battlefields

of Belgium. She only had two hours off now on

a Sunday. Kent and back in two hours? She was

filled with mad fluttering joy. He was safe and

everything was possible again.

Sidcup, September 1917

A tall handsome man arrived, clean, healthy,

32

tired. There was something of one who burned

the midnight oil about him. And a medical

coolness off which women’s attempts at thanks

slip and slide, and against which men’s attempts

to match up look ridiculous.

‘Major Gillies,’ he said, introducing himself.

‘I’m your surgeon.’

I am here. Hospital. This is the reality. Hold it.

Gillies. Gillies. Gillies. Remember that.

‘How are you feeling, Captain?’

Riley thought about it. Not the slightest idea.

He flicked his eyes up.

‘Do you know what’s happened to you?’

Riley felt a tiny little snort in his nose.

‘You’ve lost quite a lot of your jaw to a gunshot

wound, Captain,’ Gillies said. ‘And we’re going to

put you back together.’

Oh. Gunshot wound. You’d think you’d remember

that, wouldn’t you?

He wanted to ask more – What happened? Did

I …? But he didn’t want to ask, as well. And – no

one can help being shot.

The tall man was watching for a response.

33

Riley had no response – or no idea how to

give it. Gillies continued: ‘This is Tonks, and

this is Marcus. The first thing we need to do, is

get a good look at you, see what we’re dealing

with here. Marcus here is going to take some

photographs, and later Tonks is going to draw

you. Don’t worry, he’s quite talented. That way,

we don’t have to disturb you more than we need,

so you can heal better. So we’re going to take a

look at you now …’

Riley had seen Tonks before. Sir Alfred knew

him. Unmistakable man: like an eagle. He

was often at exhibitions. He didn’t like the

Impressionist painters.

With unutterable tenderness, the Major unpinned

and unwrapped Riley’s face, handing the bandages

like streamers to the bony-handed nurse.

I’m so sorry but it’s not convenient, thought

Riley. I have an appointment at two thirty in

Buenos Aires.

He lay there, while they uncovered his face.

Medical words washed around him: mandible,

messeter, ramus, coronoid process. They probed

34

him gently: lifting, turning. Someone set up the

great caravan of the camera with its hood, and

its lights.

‘Because you have had an infection, we have

to let it heal up completely,’ Gillies was saying,

‘before we can get to work remodelling you.’

I am no longer a man who does things, Riley

thought. I am a man who things are done to.

Major Gillies explained: ‘You’re going to be

here quite a while, but remember, you’re not ill,

you’re wounded. When you feel up to it, take

a stroll. There’s a library up at the house. The

gardens are nice. Plenty of chaps about.’

Riley saw the gardens when the volunteer

worker took him to Tonks’s studio to be drawn.

Plodding the wooden walkways, he saw the

deep green wetness of the approaching English

autumn. The shrubs dripping in the rain. The

moss under the hedge. The collapsed browning

stems of the summer flowers. The deserted

lawns.

Tonks didn’t show Riley the picture when it

was done.

Quick Reads are brilliant short new books written by bestselling writers to help people discover the joys of reading for pleasure.

Find out more at www.quickreads.org.uk

@Quick_Reads Quick-Reads

We would like to thank all our funders:

At Quick Reads, World Book Day and World Book Night we want to encourage everyone in the UK and Ireland

to read more and discover the joy of books.

World Book Day is on 6 March 2014 Find out more at www.worldbookday.com

World Book Night is on 23 April 2014 Find out more at www.worldbooknight.org

We would also like to thank all our partners in the Quick Reads project for their help and support: NIACE, unionlearn, National Book Tokens, The Reading Agency, National

Literacy Trust, Welsh Books Council, The Big Plus Scotland, DELNI, NALA

Enjoy this book?

Find out about all the others at www.quickreads.org.uk

For Quick Reads audio clips as well as videos and ideas to help you enjoy reading visit the BBC’s Skillswise website www.bbc.co.uk/quickreads

Join the Reading Agency’s Six Book Challenge at www.readingagency.org.uk/sixbookchallenge

Find more books for new readers at www.newisland.ie www.barringtonstoke.co.uk

Free courses to develop your skills are available in your local area. To find out more phone 0800 100 900.

For more information on developing your skills in Scotland visit www.thebigplus.com

Want to read more? Join your local library. You can borrow books for free and take part in inspiring reading activities.

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