This year sees the centenary of the third battle of Ypres. John Howlett may be well known to many in Rye as a local campaigner, a passionate European (he is half Italian), Corbynite and a frequent thorn in the side of Rother Council. Most of you will not know, however, that he has spent the past 15 years writing a chronicle of love and war. He has just completed the sixth and final volume of his Harry Cardwell series which combines history and fact with fiction, from 1916 into the new Millennium.
His books follow Harry and Annie, families and friends through the 20th century. Their love story started exactly 100 years ago in 1917 during the grim and endless slaughter of the Third Battle of Ypres that came to be called Passchendaele. The centenary of the battle will be marked in July by the UK Government in partnership with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, the city of Ypres, the Municipality of Zonnebeke and the Memorial Museum Passchendaele 1917.
John’s anger at injustice started in his early years and it was whilst reading history at Oxford that he and his schoolfriend from Tonbridge, David Sherwin, wrote Crusaders, the original screenplay that later in the 1960s became Lindsay Anderson’s award-winning film If… a razor-sharp satire which eviscerates the British establishment.
The first volume ‘Love of an Unknown Soldier‘ is available to buy in The Rye Bookshop. All six volumes are available in Rye Library and can be purchased via his website, along with his other books, including a recent reprint of his biography of his hero, James Dean. See www.johnhowlett.co.uk.
Photos: Courtesy John Howlett