Gillian Mawson was born in Stockport and obtained a Master’s degree in Social History from the University of Manchester.
To date she has published four successful books relating to the Second World War Home Front and interviewed over 500 wartime evacuees from England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, the Channel Islands and Gibraltar. She contributed a chapter on ‘Evacuated Mothers’ to the book The Home Front in Britain: Images, Myths and Forgotten Experiences since 1914 by Professor Maggie Andrews and Dr Janis Lomas. Her current research will result in a series of books relating to evacuation, occupation and deportation in the Channel Islands between 1940 and 1945.
In addition to her writing, she has worked with television and radio documentary makers in England and the Channel Islands on the story of wartime evacuation. She has organised evacuee reunions and in 2010 she established a community group for Guernsey evacuees who came to northern England in 1940 and did not return home in 1945. In 2011, Guernsey awarded her their ‘Ambassador of the Year Award’ for her efforts in sharing the experiences of Guernsey’s wartime evacuees.
Publications:
Guernsey Evacuees: The Forgotten Evacuees of the Second World War (The History Press)
Evacuees: Children’s Lives on the WWII Home Front (Pen and Sword)
Britain’s Wartime Evacuees: The People, Places and Stories of the evacuations told through the accounts of those who were there (Pen and Sword)
Rhymes and Remembrance: Poems written by Britain’s Second World War Evacuees (Wolfian press)
‘Evacuated Mothers’ in The Home Front in Britain: Myths and Forgotten Experiences since 1914 by M Andrews and J Lomas (eds), (Palgrave Macmillan)
Gillian’s book, Dear Aunty Eleanor: The WWII Story of the British Evacuee and Mrs Eleanor Roosevelt, has been optioned to be turned into a TV series. Gillian is hard at work on a series of five historical fiction novels.
