A Diary from World War Two in the Netherlands
Gerard Brender à Brandis
Marianne Brandis was born in the Netherlands and came to Canada with her family in 1947; they lived in British Columbia and Nova Scotia before moving to Ontario. She received a BA and MA from McMaster University in Hamilton. During her middle years, in addition to writing in her spare time, she worked as a writer at private radio stations and the CBC, and from 1967 to 1989 she taught writing and English literature at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute (Ryerson University) in Toronto. She is now a full-time
She began writing in her teens and experimented with short stories, plays, and poetry before concentrating on novels and creative non-fiction. This Spring's Sowing , her first novel to be published, appeared in 1970. It and a later one, Special Nests , are both set in modern-day Canada.
In 1977 Marianne began writing historical fiction, and since then most of her work has had a strong historical element. The Tinderbox , The Quarter-Pie Window , The Sign of the Scales , Fire Ship , and Rebellion are set in Ontario in the early nineteenth century and have been used in schools to help teach history. Elizabeth, Duchess of Somerset is the fictionalized biography of a duchess who lived in England in the time of the Stuart Restoration and Queen Anne.
A Diary from World War Two in the Netherlands
Gerard Brender à Brandis