As statues get interrogated and forgotten history comes to light, there’s been a lot of discussion as to whether it’s right to remove statues to try to ‘forget’ the bad parts of history and rewrite it in a positive light. That’s not what’s happening, because we’re not rewriting history – we’re writing an unbiased, truthful version of events that happened that should never have been embellished or whitewashed. So everyone can form a fair opinion of what happened.

In The Luke Bright Series, it’s a big thing – the rewriting of history. In the UK and the USA, both countries rewrote books, remade films and even removed cultural references, that were associated with the other. They wanted a clean (Atlantic) split and that meant changing history, rewriting it so the generations below would accept it as the norm. And whilst it may seem unrealistic, it’s exactly the kind of irrational thing I imagine this particular set of governments (Boris Johnson and Trump) would do if they were in the same situation (especially since they both have form.)

Luke’s grandparents (who aren’t alive by the time we reach his story) would’ve lived through the war, and his parents were just children by that time, but Luke’s never lived in the world when the war was being fought. He just lived with the aftermath and the ‘Britwashed’ world he now lives in is something he soon realises isn’t right. It’s something he wants to stop seeping into other generations and that’s why he’s fighting his fight, despite never living in wartime.

And that’s exactly what’s happening now. We’re fighting to resurface history so even more generations don’t go on living like we are – praising heroes with hidden pasts and forming prejudices that have been forced onto them by being made to accept misleading history. It’s exactly how prejudice forms – a lack of knowledge, but sometimes that’s deliberate, and when you get round to reading A Long Lost Time, you’ll see how important that factor is in the whole book, and in fact the whole of The Luke Bright Series. We need all the facts before we can make fair judgements. We haven’t been given that, which is why knowing the true history is vital.

As for the statues, removing them doesn’t mean that part of history is being erased – we can still learn about it in museums, but there’s no need to glorify them if they’re going to offend others.

It does scare me sometimes how relatable The Luke Bright Series is becoming and how much we can learn from it, but it also gives me hope that maybe if someone like Luke can make a difference, there’s people here who can too. I’m trying my best, even though it seems hard, and in fact, I was watching a film recently that made me think about what I’m doing, writing books on such an enormous topic:

“You know what writing a book against war is like? It’s like writing a book against Wednesdays. Wednesdays… are a fact of life, and if you don’t like them, you could just stay in bed, but you can’t stop them because Wednesdays are coming and if today isn’t actually a Wednesday it soon will be.” – Daphne Milne, Goodbye Christopher Robin –

Sure, war was once a fact of life and in may cases it always will be. War is a big part of our history and sometimes it’s the only way we’ve been able to progress. But, maybe that’s just what we’ve been taught to believe. Just like with our histories being rewritten for us, maybe the choice of whether we went to war or not was out of our hands and decided by people who were much higher up than us and didn’t have to fight themselves.

It’s something worth thinking about and it’s something I’m certainly trying to fight against. All I know is that we need to remain as knowledgable and open as possible before we make judgements and drastic decisions. Especially when people’s lives are at risk.

Atlantic Split, At Liberty To Live and An Undercover Dream, the first three books in The Luke Bright Series are available to purchase NOW! The final book of the series A Long Lost Time will be released in 2020!

Please follow me on my blog and social media links below, and use the links on my website to purchase a copy of each if you have not done so. Don’t forget to leave a review! Thank you once again for taking the time to read this blog post

N.A.K