One half of SL Roman – Sarah Onions heard a story of an unlucky boy who was killed in WW2 when she was teaching at Strode’s College in Egham in southern England.

All teachers are aware that the students always seem to know what’s happening before anyone else and her classes knew the story of the children who were killed in Egham by a bomb in November 1940.

Strode’s had been a grammar school in the 1940’s but became an institution for students between 16 and 18 by the time Sarah arrived there in 2002.

Two of her students made media coursework about the strange tale and the college principal, Frank Botham, told Sarah about a ceremony to lay a new headstone for the unlucky original boy in 2004 – which coincided with the 300^th anniversary of Strode’s College.  Sarah and one of her TV and Video students were invited to the ceremony with the principal and a short film was made about the story.

The ceremony in Englefield Green Cemetery near Egham was well attended – with many members of the Evacuees Association including Jean Slattery who had kept the story in her heart for more than 60 years. Sarah met Martin Waddilove, a relative of the unlucky boy and her student Stuart interviewed him on camera.

The other source of information at Strode’s was Mick Hook, the examinations officer. Mick had a great interest in local history and told Sarah about the children who were killed and she learnt about another evacuated boy who died, George Button, and a girl, Barbara Arkell who also perished. The 3 children were sleeping in the front of the draper’s shop on Egham High Street when the German bomber struck. Barbara was a member of the Arkell family who ran the shop- her brother Tony was sleeping at the back of the house so he survived and finished his education at Strode’s and became a college governor many years later, attending the headstone ceremony.

Barbara, as an older sister, became the model for Annie in One Year One Night and Tony was the inspiration for Robert, Annie’s younger brother who went to a posh private school near the fictional village of Millside.

Sarah kept the story in her head for 8 years, believing as a former journalist that the tale ‘had legs’. But she only realised its full potential once she and her friend Laura Meloni Bywaters discussed it and concluded that it would be better to turn into fiction. So, One Year One Night by SL Roman was born.

Now on sale everywhere: at Barnes and Noble in North America and – in the UK, at Amazon.co.uk and in Surbiton, SW London at The Regency bookshop.