Jun 30, 2026 · 53 min · 12 segments
Gothic mystery author GR Pidgeon chats to me about his ghostly gothic novel - The Haunting of Hern Hall - Set during the aftermath of WW1. A war haunted chaplain arrives at Hern Hall to unravel its…
The book is set just after World War I and one of the main protagonists, John Elliot, was a chaplain during World War I where he faced many horrors and he suffers from PTSD, known as shell shock at the time.
And you go into a lot of detail in the book about his flashbacks to the horrors of his experiences in the war.
So I think being interested in the war poets certainly opened that part of history for me imaginatively.
Those war poets are often expressing the sort of the horror, the disgust at the things that they saw, the disgust at the way they were being treated by a military that increasingly began to sort of just throw bodies into the line.
I was, you know, trying always to bring that part of history to life in a way that meant something to myself.
I went for the idea of the army chaplain because I just thought that was a really interesting way into the story.
And to try and give them hope in a place that, from an outsider's perspective, you think, gosh, that must have been incredibly, incredibly difficult.
So that sort of trying to imagine what that would have been like, that character of the chaplain, once I sort of hooked into that, the story really came alive in my imagination.
I think we're more confident on the Second World War, but I think there were relatives there.
But no, I can't claim to sort of have a deep personal connection with that, although obviously...
As most families in Britain are, there will have been connections back there.
But in the area where I live down here in Oxted and Surrey, and as you will know, every churchyard you go to, there is a grave to World War I soldiers.
I go to France quite a lot for my holidays and we're always going past all of these huge memorials to go past the Zom when we're driving on our holiday.
The book is set just after World War I and one of the main protagonists, John Elliot, was a chaplain during World War I where he faced many horrors and he suffers from PTSD, known as shell shock at the time.
And you go into a lot of detail in the book about his flashbacks to the horrors of his experiences in the war.
So I think being interested in the war poets certainly opened that part of history for me imaginatively.
Those war poets are often expressing the sort of the horror, the disgust at the things that they saw, the disgust at the way they were being treated by a military that increasingly began to sort of just throw bodies into the line.
I was, you know, trying always to bring that part of history to life in a way that meant something to myself.
I went for the idea of the army chaplain because I just thought that was a really interesting way into the story.
And to try and give them hope in a place that, from an outsider's perspective, you think, gosh, that must have been incredibly, incredibly difficult.
So that sort of trying to imagine what that would have been like, that character of the chaplain, once I sort of hooked into that, the story really came alive in my imagination.
I think we're more confident on the Second World War, but I think there were relatives there.
But no, I can't claim to sort of have a deep personal connection with that, although obviously...
As most families in Britain are, there will have been connections back there.
But in the area where I live down here in Oxted and Surrey, and as you will know, every churchyard you go to, there is a grave to World War I soldiers.
I go to France quite a lot for my holidays and we're always going past all of these huge memorials to go past the Zom when we're driving on our holiday.
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