Ian McEwan

Ian McEwan is a wonderful story teller who really brings his story and its characters to life. McEwan may be an author but he is also a historian, and that role in his life really came out in this novel. In the interview (link below) McEwan talks about his research process for the story. He talks about going to  the attic of an old Chapel, which is now a library, and reading up on the war. At one specific point in the interview he discusses reading letters from young women, most of them nurses, written to soldiers in battle, during war time. With the influence of these letters it truthfully transformed the novel from a story about a young couple in love in the 1930's and 1940's to a more complicated love story. Not only is the novel a story about love, but it is also about the war, the major scene in the novel when Robbie is on the beach at Dunkirk waiting to leave was clearly another influence from McEwan's research of that time period and what the war was like. Things that were popular in the time frame of the book are listed in the link below. Some things that were starting to come around to the public was the radio, hats for both men and women were a popular fashion trend which is something that can be visualized in the older female characters in the novel.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/jan/03/fiction.ianmcewan

http://www.kyrene.org/schools/brisas/sunda/decade/1930.htm#headlines