When I first began to research The Bridge of Deaths I found that in history books I could usually find mention of Anthony Crossley whenever the Munich Pact of 1938 was mentioned. He was a one of a Small group of what was known as the anti-appeasers. Neville Chamberlain then Prime Minister of England in an effort (for better or worse, the latter being the opinion of most) to prevent war with Germany signed an agreement, with England, France and Italy. The agreement today in most History books is called a failed attempt to appease Hitler; with it he was given the right to annex Czechoslovakia’s Sudentenland. Anthony Crossley is prominent in some of the books because in Sir Martin Gilbert makes reference in his books to “quips” amongst other details written by Anthony Crossley. Aside from being mentioned as part of a list of anti-appeasers I found that other historians got their information from the Sir Martin Gilbert books. In John Charmley’s book Chamberlain and the lost Peace the historians observation is that Neville Chamberlain felt; apparently correctly that if England went to war the English Empire (as it was in 1938) would cease to exist, and it did.

I first found the G-AESY through a documentary on TV about the Munich Pact, one which I have never been able to find again and which I was so stunned to see at the time that I foolishly forgot to write what it was called, was it PBS or The History Channel? In it the G-AESY flew up into the air behind Neville Chamberlain waving the Munich Pact, up in the sky in a perfectly pristine form. I tried to convey what I felt to Bill and in turn to Maggie in the book. I wonder if it helped the reader or hindered that I was able to place a photograph from Critical Past, I have not had much of a reaction about that.
I am not a historian and I even managed to fail history more than once, as such I was uncomfortable and unsure with anything that I read, and I decided to try to find the sources that were being quoted as far back as I could as far back often as to Hansard. Hansard is the word-by-word record of the English Parliament. To-day as I point out in the Bridge of Deaths anyone has the freedom to go on line and read entry by entry, this was not the case when I began to research and my eventual visit to The Houses of Parliament Library was a magical day I will always remember. It was such luck in the course of my search to stumble upon in the Foreign Office archives at The National Archives UK, a file whereby from 10, Downing Street a “starred” question was approved to be asked by a member of Parliament (R.W. Sorensen) to the Speaker.

To me this was a great reminder that history is as Voltaire said “The agreed upon lie”. Somewhere after the passage of time information is diluted into the agreed upon side of a story. Imagine today’s political problems, in any country or even between two countries or globally. We are all very aware that if we want to form our own opinion we need to look for various news sources; the known left and right perspectives. If we have the time read the actual reports, watch C-SPAN to personally see what was said and how. When we read a history book it is also important to take into account where the information is coming from. Does the historian have an agenda or an affiliation? It is very much the same as reading only the newspapers from the left or the right political perspective.
In the Bridge of Deaths I tried very carefully to seek out as varied a background as I could with the historical sources.
I hope many people are entertained by the love story, intrigued by the mystery as well as informed by the historical research.
This was first posted on my Tumblr Blog on July 25th,2011...as I have more followers here I have decided to re-post.
M.C.V. Egan
Jan. 22. 2012