Lesley was born in Wales, and has a nice way of showing how the boys from London struggle with Welsh names and words. Only in time does Jimmy establish his own sense of belonging in Llanbryn. Jimmy resents the way his brother calls Mrs Thomas ‘Aunty Gwen’ and wishes their host wouldn’t pretend that the house in Heol Mabon was the boys’ home. (This reminded me of the petty humiliation of being the last to be chosen for a team in school games in Cardiff.) But we soon find that Ronnie is quicker to settle and develop a bond with their hosts, Mr and Mrs Thomas. At first, Jimmy is worried about his brother, fearing that his sulky looks and tears will deter the locals from choosing them as their guests.

The author evokes the tension as the children wait in the miners’ institute hall to be allocated to local families. Jimmy and Ronnie arrive at the village of Llanbryn after an endless train journey from London. Lesley Parr has followed in Nina Bawden’s footsteps with a superb debut novel featuring two brothers sent to Wales in September 1939. Years later, I watched it again with my then eight year old son, Owen. As a child growing up in Wales in the 1970s, I loved the BBC television adaptation of Carrie’s War, Nina Bawden’s novel about children evacuated to Wales. This mass movement of the young has long been fertile ground for writers and dramatists. The great exodus: children arriving in Devon, 1940. Many of the children had never been to the countryside. On the eve of the Second World War, around 800,000 children were evacuated from big cities like London to the countryside to keep them safe from devastating bombing attacks.

The valley of lost secrets lesley parr