Oxfordshire Author Jo Eames’ Novel Approach to Launching Book
2nd June 2014: Friday, 6th June was the 70th anniversary of D-Day and the Battle of Normandy. So Jo Eames, writer, wine-buyer and co-owner of The Rose & Crown, invited locals into the pub to mark the launch of her brand new book, Not Only The Good Boys, a gripping story set in the year up to D-Day, as part of the annual Warwick Words Festival of Literature & Spoken Word.
Jo Eames
Festival goers and regulars joined Jo at The Rose & Crown for wine and book readings by the author. Keeping in the 1940s spirit, there was also an old-fashioned knees-up D-Day style for people in the mood to party, with live music and dancing at the popular Warwick watering-hole.
Like her well-received first novel, The Faithless Wife, which explored the Spanish Civil War on Menorca, her new book delves into history again, telling the incredible true story of one man’s race to invent crucial secret weapons for D-Day. Major-General Hobart’s work on building a range of experimental tanks, strange Heath-Robinson devices known as Hobo’s Funnies, arguably changed the direction of the war, not once but twice. Not Only The Good Boys weaves fact and fiction in a deft, witty and moving narrative, with some of the story set in Jo’s own Oxfordshire house where the Hobart family lived during the war.
“It was whilst renovating my own house that I discovered a link to the Major-General that compelled me to want to tell Hobo’s story seventy years on from the historic day on which he faced his sternest test,” says Jo.
“Under the bathroom lino I found some Egyptian newspapers dated 1939. I was intrigued as to who left them there. Major-General Hobart’s name on an old title deed gave me the clue and led me to the story of one of World War II’s greatest unsung heroes.
“This summer, when people remember the D-Day landings and the allied victory in Europe, it’s fitting to be able to focus on some of the extraordinary events that took place in the run-up to 6th June 1944. As well as launching my own book, which is a tribute to one of the many heroes of the war, I wanted to arrange a great celebration that will appeal to book lovers as well as anyone just seeking a great evening out at a great pub,” she says.
