As such, many of the flower of British youth were buried in Northern France, Belgium, and beyond. To add to the pain was the decision by the government to bury the fallen men of war in the countries where they fell. Cracks were beginning to appearing in a once patriarchal society with women binding their breasts, bobbing their hair, and voting. Servicemen were begging on the streets after losing their homes and hardly anyone was without grief from losing a loved one in the war.

The Empire that had once boasted of the sun never setting on her majesty’s possessions had been humbled and brought low. The more she researched the era the more she got interested in the British society of the era. Ann knew that women in Britain had been granted the right to vote in 1918 but was more interested in knowing what had changed during this time.

She had read a lot of women’s social history that dated to the late years of the 19th century and was fascinated at how tenacious the women fought for suffrage and the vote.

Hope’s debut novel “Wake” came from her interest in the First World War. Her second novel “The Ballroom” came out in 2016 while her third novel “Expectation” is a contemporary novel that was published to rave reviews and was optioned to be made into a feature-length drama by Haut et Court, a French film company. The novel has now been sold in more than seventeen countries. Upon graduating, Hope started acting as a ten-year-old at the Bolton based “Octagon Youth Theatre” before she worked her way up and got a role in “Doctor Who.” She has also appeared in “Coronation Street,” “Waking the Dead,” and “Crime and Punishment.” Anna was lucky to have her first novel be the subject of a seven-way auction before it was finally published by Transworld Publishers. She then went to Wadham College in Oxford to study English, graduated with a Masters in Creative Writing from the Birkbeck College in London, and then proceeded to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. While she has become an author in her own right, before that she was best known as Novice Hame when she appeared in “Doctor Who.” She was brought up in a small town in Lancashire and went to Turton High school before she moved to Manchester as a teen to attend the William Hulme Grammar School.

Anna Hope is an English actress and author of historical fiction works from Manchester in the United Kingdom.

Wake by Anna Hope