War Brides: Reaching for New Lives
The British Library & Raphael Samuel History Centre Talk
Date: 3rd March, 2014
Time: 18.00 – 19.30
Location: The British Library Centre for Conservation, 1st Floor British Library
RMS MAURETANIA, arriving in Halifax, NS, 24 August 1946 with war brides, from the collection of The Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, Halifax, Nova
Scotia
In the years following the Second World War, 70,000 British women crossed the Atlantic to start a new life with the
American GIs who had captured their hearts while they were stationed here. Their stories received widespread
attention both in their home press and in America, as they struggled to adapt to relocation in fabled places that didn’t
quite match up with what they’d seen at the movies.
But the GI Brides were only the tip of the iceberg. All over Europe, wartime marriages meant a post-war flux of
women and their children moving from country to country. Inevitably, many marriages broke down, but others
endured, as women were determined to prove to family and friends back home that the huge gamble they had taken for
one man – and a ‘foreigner’ at that – was really worth it.
For this event Duncan Barrett and Nuala Calvi, authors of the Sunday Times bestseller GI Brides, are joined by
Professor Norma Clarke, daughter of a Greek war bride, Rob Stephenson, whose father was an American GI, and Dr
Jo Stanley, who writes about war brides’ journeys.
The talk is free to attend but places are limited. To reserve a seat please RSVP
Katy Pettit: k.pettit@uel.ac.uk
Speaker Information:
Duncan Barrett and Nuala Calvi are the authors of Sunday Times bestseller GI Brides. They were inspired to write
the book after Nuala's grandmother, shortly before her death, broke a life-long vow of silence about her first marriage
to a troubled GI - Nuala's biological grandfather. The tale she told took Nuala and Duncan on a 13,000-mile journey to
discover her long-lost American family, as well as the stories of more than 60 other war brides.
Norma Clarke is Professor of English Literature at Kingston University. In 1945 her father, Sergeant-major William
Clarke, was stationed in a school in Athens. Across the road lived the Lignu family with five beautiful daughters, one
named Rena. Greece was in a mess; life was very hard. Rena married Bill. This evening Norma Clarke tells the story
of a Greek war bride from a daughter’s point of view.
Jo Stanley is an expert on gender in maritime pasts, particularly women seafarers. Her books include works on female
pirates and camp seamen. She is currently writing Risk! Women on the wartime seas, for Yale University Press (2015);
this evening she will talk about war brides who crossed the oceans in both world wars.
Robert Stephenson is a PhD student in the Geography Department at Queen Mary, University of London. As a
teenager in the 1950s he discovered that his real father was an American GI of whom he had previously known
nothing. He decided to find out more: a decision that sent him on a painful emotional journey which he is still
travelling today.
Finding us
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