Julie Summers

Julie Summers Biography
I am the author of eleven works of non-fiction, including the best-selling book Jambusters which inspired the ITV drama series Home Fires. Born on the Wirral and brought up in Cheshire, I spent the first half of her career working in the art world. However I have always wanted to be a writer and when the opportunity arose to work on a biography of my great uncle, Sandy Irvine, I took it with relish. Fearless on Everest was published in 2000 and was followed in 2005 by The Colonel of Tamarkan, a biography of my grandfather, Brigadier Sir Philip Toosey, the ‘real’ colonel who built the Bridge on the River Kwai. Since then I have been exploring the impact of the Second World War on people’s lives, with particular focus on women on the Home Front. Stranger in the House looked at how women coped when the men came home from the war, while When the Children Came Home examined the impact of evacuation on family life in the war’s aftermath. Jambusters celebrates the extraordinary work of the Women’s Institute in the Second World War and has been my most successful book to date resulting in me being listed as one of only four women in the top 50 historians in Britain in 2015. Earlier that year I published Fashion on the Ration that was selected as one of The Times history books of 2015. The book accompanied an exhibition at the Imperial War Museum, London. The show will open in IWM/North in spring 2016.
I am currently working on a new book looking at the secret life of houses during the Second World War. This will be published in 2018. In the meantime, I continue to advise ITV as a consultant on storylines and historical script details.
I have appeared on Radio 4 on Woman’s Hour; Start the Week and Excess Baggage and am a frequent contributor on Radio Oxford. I was interviewed for The Wildest Dream film and appeared on the BBC in A Century of Fatherhood and more recently in 100 Years of the WI with Lucy Worsley. Home Fires series 2 finished in May 2016 and we are awaiting a decision from ITV as to whether there will be a third series.
www.juliesummers.co.uk