| Katharine Campbell’s father Sholto Douglas was the hero of her childhood, an unconventional senior commander in the Royal Air Force, described as ‘a gloriously contentious character’. Following childhood abandonment and poverty, Sholto rose through the ranks of the fledgling RAF in the First World War before taking on a crucial role in the Second as head of Fighter Command and going on to serve as military governor in Germany in the war’s devastating aftermath. But when Katharine was five years old, he began to be stolen away by strange night-time wanderings and daytime distress – including vivid flashbacks to his time signing death warrants in post-war Germany. The doctors called it dementia, but decades later, Katharine started researching her father’s story and realised that she had observed the undiagnosed consequences of post-traumatic stress disorder. PTSD is a hot topic today. We’re aware of the front-line soldier suffering from ‘shell-shock’ – but what about the senior officer giving the orders, who may be carrying hidden wounds accumulated over many years? We don’t expect our military leaders to have PTSD, nor is it something they often recognise or acknowledge in themselves, yet this secret burden likely affects a surprising number of those making important tactical decisions. A thought-provoking insight into the damage done by military conflict, Behold the Dark Gray Man is the story of a daughter’s search to understand the impact of war upon one of its most charismatic senior commanders “Hugely powerful. An exploration of fatherhood, heroes, war and trauma from an intensely personal point of view.” – Dan Snow, historian and broadcaster Dr Katharine Campbell was a neuroscientist before becoming a writer, working for many years on the development of pain processing in infants. She brings to her writing substantial medical knowledge, an eye for detail and a fascination with the events of the first half of the twentieth century, initiated by the exciting stories she heard as a child from her father Sholto Douglas, a senior RAF commander. She collaborates with historians across Europe and in the UK, and with leading experts in Australia and the Netherlands on post-traumatic stress disorder, an illness that affected her father, especially in his old age. She also campaigns for the charity Combat Stress. Bitback Publishing, available to buy from the 16th March here |
New Book ‘Behold the Dark Gray Man’ written by member Katharine Campbell is out in March
