They didn't know that they were living in the shadow of an active volcano. I could quite understand how uneasy my heroine Claudia felt when she looked at it.Īt that time though the inhabitants of Pompeii and nearby towns like Herculaneum - which was also destroyed in the volcano's eruption - were quite unaware of the danger that threatened them. Even then the great volcano Vesuvius, which erupted and destroyed the city thousands of years earlier, felt full of menace. I went to Pompeii many years before I wrote Pompeii, but I've never forgotten it. What does it all mean? And why is she so disturbed by Vesuvius, the great volcano that looms over the city. When the ground shakes Claudia is convinced it is a bad omen.

It's a day of strange encounters and even odder portents. It's August AD 78 and Claudia is at the Forum in Pompeii. The town seemed to have vanished – snuffed out like the wick on my lamp. When I dared to look back again, I could see nothing but blackness where Herculaneum had been. 'It is heading for Herculaneum,' Father shouted hoarsely. Mother was crying that the gods had forsaken us. High over Vesuvius, flames rent the sky, like huge flashes of lightning, as they had in my dream, so long ago. How loud it sounded – even to us, some miles away. A fiery cloud was hurtling down the side of the mountain. What was it I had seen? Vulcan' s forge itself? All around me I could hear screams. And out of that vast black column of whirling rock and ash a roiling mass of flame emerged, like a huge glowing furnace.

Something so frightening that I can still see it, in my mind's eye. Then, as my eye travelled across the mountain, I saw something else. Here and there on the mountain, flames were leaping up, as if torches or fires were being lit. Hateful Vesuvius! Then I blinked, bewildered. Tears filled my eyes, but I rubbed them away. How many of them had left in time to escape? And what about Uncle, on his farm? 'I will live and die on this farm,' he had told us. Most of the books feature British characters and history, but some are about non-British characters during important events and times in world history.Books My Story Series The Author Author Blog Contacts & Links Home They are similar to the Dear America series, each book is written in the form of the diary of a fictional young woman or man living during an important event in history. My Story is a series of historical novels for children published by Scholastic UK.

Pompeii by Sue Reid