Red Sky Dawning

A tale of triumph, adventure, frightening events, danger; a tender love story; a page out of history - Red Sky Dawning is all of these. It could have happened - and some of it actually did. An internationally renowned comic did take his family and entourage to Russia early in 1914. He did appear in command performances before the Tsar and organise benefit occasions for Grand Duchess Elisabeta Feodorovna's Red Cross charity work. A football match between the Russian team and British sailors really happened. To the end of his days his son carried the scar from a bullet that creased his skull as he fled the hospital that was being shelled by the Austrians. All this is documented, both in the diaries he kept and the articles about his adventures in half a dozen different languages that appeared in European newspapers in the Twenties. These provided an invaluable source of background information around which to create a fictional story.