Launch: Antony J. Bell’s A Penny a Shell

INTERVIEWED BY LESLIE S. LOWE

Antony J. Bell is a historical fiction author from Yorkshire, focused on the untold stories of ordinary people in extraordinary times. His debut novel, A Penny a Shell, is inspired by his great-grandmother. He combines careful research with human storytelling to give a voice to those lost to history.

How would you describe this book and its themes in a couple of sentences?

In 1916, thirty-five women were killed in an explosion at the Barnbow munitions factory in Yorkshire. One of them was my great-grandmother, Sarah Ann Jennings. A Penny a Shell tells the story behind that statistic: the lives, friendships, and quiet courage of the women who worked on the home front, where speed meant money and mistakes meant death.

What inspired you to write historical fiction?

I’ve always been drawn to the stories of the Great War, but not the ones you typically hear. It was the quieter stories, the working-class voices that sat underneath it all and were often overlooked.

When I later discovered my family’s connection to the war, that interest became something more focused. Historical fiction, for me, became a way to explore those missing voices and bring the human side back into the story, where it belongs.

Character building is important, even if there is truth in a story. How do you build your characters? What is the most challenging for you in building your characters?

For me, it starts with getting as close as I can to the real 1916—not just the events, but what it actually felt like to live in it. The long hours, the exhaustion, the strain of feeding a family when food is scarce. What it felt like to lose a brother at the Somme, and the weight of that hanging over a city like Leeds.

The challenge is holding onto individuality. It would be easy to group them together as “the Barnbow girls” and leave it at that. But they weren’t—each one carried something different to that factory, and once you understand the pressures and small moments that shaped them, their reactions, their fears, even their humour feels natural rather than constructed.

How do you think the reader will connect with the main characters Eliza, Sarah, and Lucy in this book?

I think readers connect with them because they feel real. They’re not heroes in the traditional sense. They’re working-class women trying to earn money, keep their families afloat, and get through each day in a place that could kill them if something goes wrong.

There’s a lot of history behind Barnbow—the processes, the risks, the wider war—but none of that matters if the reader doesn’t feel it through the characters. Everything had to come back to them: what they see, what they’re willing to risk, and what it might cost them.

Your great-grandmother was one of the thirty-five women killed in the catastrophic Barnbow munitions factory explosion of 1916. How did this add to your story? How did this affect you personally writing it?

It changed everything.

For most of my life, I only knew her in fragments. A name. A brief mention. That she died during the war. It wasn’t something that was ever fully spoken about.

When I started looking into it properly, I realised how little there actually was. You’re piecing together a life from records, from snippets, from whatever survives. Trying to build a fuller picture of someone who had been reduced to a line in history.

That process shaped the entire book. It stopped being about writing a story and became about getting it right—the people, the tone, the respect it deserved.

Writing those scenes carries a different weight when you know a person you’re writing about was part of your own family. You’re constantly aware that this happened.

In the end, it was about giving some shape back to something that had been lost over time—and making sure she and the others weren’t just forgotten.

You have written other novels about wartime history. How is this different? What are you working on now?

All of my work sits in the same space—World War I historical fiction based on actual events—but always from the perspective of the home front rather than the trenches. A Penny a Shell is probably the most intimate of the three, staying close to the day-to-day reality of the women at Barnbow—the pressure, the exhaustion, the constant risk. Not battles or strategy, but the lives being lived behind them.

I’m currently working on two other novels. One centres on the Scarborough bombardment and its impact on the town, and the other follows a young boy serving on a minesweeping trawler. Like A Penny a Shell, both are rooted in actual events and focus on the human side of the war.

How did your life experiences add any value to writing it?

My background shaped the way I approached the story. I’m a working-class Yorkshireman, brought up during the unemployment crisis of the 70s and 80s. Sixteen years in the Royal Air Force gave me an understanding of structure, discipline, and environments where mistakes carry real consequences — all of which translated naturally into writing about Barnbow.

What is the key message or take-away that you want readers to get from reading A Penny a Shell?

That the war wasn’t just fought on the front lines. Behind that war was an entire workforce—particularly women—doing dangerous, essential work under immense pressure. Many of their stories were never properly told.

Every writer has his own habits. What are yours? Do you write every day, and how do you handle writer’s block?

I work in phases—periods where I’m very focused and writing consistently, and others where I’m stepping back, thinking things through, or doing research.

Writer’s block, for me, usually comes from something not quite working in the story rather than a lack of ideas. If that happens, I’ll take the dog for a long walk and come back with a clearer head. It’s about solving the problem, not waiting for inspiration.

What advice would you give to other aspiring historical writers?

Do the research, but don’t let it take over the story. It wasn’t history to the people who lived it, it was their lives—and readers don’t connect with facts, they connect with people. Let the history sit around the characters, supporting the story rather than dominating it.

What is the last great book you read? Why?

Birdsong has always been my go-to when it comes to World War I fiction. It’s one of those books that stays with you long after you’ve finished it.

What it does so well is strip everything back to the human experience of the war. It covers the scale of it, but it’s the smaller moments that land—the relationships, the fear, the sense of endurance. It never feels like it’s trying to teach you history, it just places you inside it.

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