Simone

Rosamond-Davis

Author, Writer, Teacher

About

me

I am a writer and author. A journalist in a previous life, I am now a teacher and novel writer.

My first novel, 'Sophia's War' is historical fiction set in the East End of London during WWll and based on many true stories, some from my own family.

I am a mum to Charlie, 14, Archie, 12, and my fur baby, black labrador, Bonnie. Originally from London/Hertfordshire in the UK, I now live in the Sutherland Shire with my husband, Adam, and family.

Sophia's War

Sophia Moses is a beautiful, defiant, young Jewish girl living in London when World War II breaks out. Choosing between her family or the love of her life leads her from the midst of the blitz in the East End, where she is involved in the largest loss of civilian life in war time Britain, to the depths of the holocaust in Europe. In resisting Nazi Germany and its perpetrators, she works for an underground newspaper and helps to rehome destitute orphans. Along the way she loses everything and everyone dear to her. When all seems doomed, an act of kindness restores her faith in humanity. Will this gesture, along with her bravery and resilience, be enough to lead her back to her family and true love?

Get in touch

ABN: 85960929208

Not all stories begin with once upon a time.

The hamlet of Izieu, photo credit: Lucille Cottin

Seventy-nine years ago in April 1944, forty-four Jewish children aged between four and seventeen, were deported to their deaths in Auschwitz after the French Gestapo raided their orphanage in Izieu.

One of the staff, Lea Feldblum, had falsified papers enabling her to disappear but she revealed her true identity to stay with the children. She later escaped and went on to testify against Klaus Barbie, the head of the Lyon Gestapo, who ordered the deportation.

Izieu is one of the settings and the children are part of the plot in my historical novel, 'Sophia's War'.

EIGHTY-one years ago today (3rd March 2024), as bombs rained down during the blitz, England experienced its largest ever loss of life in one night.

In the worst civilian disaster of WWII, 173 people died and it wasn’t from a deadly missile dropping into a highly populated area. At 8.17pm, the air raid siren sounded, and locals walked in the pitch dark of the blackout in orderly file down the steps of the unfinished Bethnal Green underground station to take shelter on its platforms.

At 8.27pm, the searchlight shone above them and simultaneously, three buses dropped off their passengers at the shelter’s entrance. The unfamiliar, deafening sound of a new anti-aircraft rocket battery thundered across from Victoria Park. The sound of the explosion was unfamiliar, and panic ensued as people assumed that deadly German bombs were exploding.

Largest loss of civilian life

The staircase in 1943 after the tragedy. Picture credit: Tower Hamlets Archive.

Locals began barging forward. It was raining and dark. A mother dropped her baby in the confusion and as she bent to recover it, the seething mass of people queueing above her began to push forward. She fell on the wet, slippery stairway and people began to pile on top of her. A tragic jam of 300 people, five or six deep, built up within seconds, pinning people down and crushing the breath from them.

At 11.40pm, the last of the 173 dead were pulled out of the stairwell. There were 84 women, 62 children and 27 men, with more than 90 injured. Dr Joan Martin MBE said it was the worst night of her career.

“I was on duty at the Children’s Hospital in Hackney Road through the night when the mainly child casualties started to arrive. Most were dead on arrival but wet as the medics had tried to revive them with water. We were sworn to secrecy, and it was incredible that we obeyed. It was the worst night of my medical career”.

The incident was kept as quiet as possible so as not to alert the Germans to its occurrence, with a memorial, which lists every name, erected to the victims only as recently as December 2017.

My paternal grandmother, Rose Rosamond, was luckily already on the platform of the station when the disaster occurred and was oblivious until the next morning when she left the shelter and was confronted with the piles of shoes at the top of the steps. This tragedy is one of the true stories which features as part of my novel, ‘Sophia’s War’.