Bognor author shows power of good idea

Christa Butler has placed In The Shadow Of Aspar in the late 20th-century nuclear power industry.

She has based the book on her knowledge of the industry in the 1980s because of her late husband’s job as a nuclear engineer at the Harwell nuclear power station.

She wrote the book several years ago and said: “It’s good to the book in my hands after all these years. I enjoyed writing it but I do have to search for words sometimes.”

Mrs Butler, 79, of Sylvan Way, wrote her first book – a children’s story – two years ago. But she had wanted to see her story of an accident at a water-cooled nuclear power plant make it into print.

It concerns a family whose father works in the power station and whose rival only got his job because of his connections. The accident brings their fraught relationship to a head as children start to die.