At almost 90-years-old, Marjory Rae Lewis puts most of us to shame by going to a weekly keep fit class and walking pretty much everywhere she can. And now, the mother-of-five from Redbourn has published her memoir, which details her experiences as an evacuee during the Second World War.

Marjory started writing the book, titled Mission Paradise, after her mother died in 1969 saying that “she was the only one who knew my story” and “my husband saw that bringing up the story again after several years upset me quite a bit so he said ‘why don’t you write it all down’.”

“I wrote it about 45 years ago,” she adds, “I tried to get it published but all the agents said they didn’t want war books so I gave up.”

The book is essentially an autobiography, which focuses on a love affair that Marjory had with a Belgian officer during the war.

She says: “It starts from when I was a girl. My mother had a business in London and she had a customer called Lady Lever – they were titled people, she and her husband – and one day she said, ‘your children must be the only two children left in London, why don’t they come and live with us during the war’. She was childless. So we went down to live in a very lovely house near Winchester.

“We had a very nice time there and we would come and see my mother during the lulls in the bombings. She had to stay and earn a living, but by chance, she found herself working for the Belgium Resistance. She was lodging, young Belgian men that were being trained to be parachuted into occupied Belgium for espionage.”

One Christmas Marjory remembers coming home. “I was 15 and my mum had thrown a party for all these people. I met a young Belgian officer there, Jean Cornez, and we sort of had a love affair.

“I had to return to school in Winchester and I wondered what would happen - whether he was just amusing himself with me, but then he wrote to me and said he wanted to come back after the war and marry me, but he never did.”

After the war, Marjory went on to study art at Ealing School of Art, which is where she met her husband. The couple moved to Chester in1951 and lived there for 32 years, both lecturing at the Chester School of Arts, before moving to Redbourn.

“All my children had moved to London so we wanted to be closer to them. Then my husband died ten years ago and that’s when I got it out again.”

Marjory says that by chance she started corresponding with Michael Morpurgo, author of War Horse, who she briefly told her story and said he was ‘very touching’.

“He sparked something in me and it spurred me on to get it published, so I made that my goal last year.”

Marjory will be signing copies of Mission Paradise at Waterstones, St Peter’s Street, St Albans, on Saturday, April 23, from midday to 1pm. Details: 01727 834966, waterstones.com/bookshops/st-albans