Diana Raymond

Born in 1916, Diana lost her father in the preliminary bombardment to the Third Battle of Ypres the following year. In Lily’s Daughter, Jessica’s father also died fighting in the Great War, in her case the year before she was born. The sense of loss caused by a fatherless childhood is a key theme of the story, and drives many of the poor decisions Jessica makes.

Diana was an adult when she first visited her father’s grave, at Brandhoek Military Cemetery in Belgium. His final resting place was traced by her husband, the author Ernest Raymond. In Lily’s Daughter, seventeen-year-old Jessica has never visited her father’s grave, although during the course of the story her aunt reveals where he is buried, and Jessica considers that ‘Perhaps one day I would go myself.’