A NORTH Yorkshire author has written his debut novel – and will use some of the proceeds to help military personnel.

Colin Farrington’s book, In the Shadow of the Kestrel, is set in a  fictitious North Yorkshire village.
The story centres around a Luftwaffe pilot who survives a plane crash near Hornby, near Bedale, in 1942 and his relationship with his Danish girlfriend, Hanne Hjelmsleve. It is based on real events, when a German plane crashed in the area during the Second World War, killing its crew.

Mr Farrington, from Great Ayton, said the idea for the book came from a visit to a Hornby church with a German friend, where they saw the wreath dedicated to the fallen German airmen.
He forgot about the visit until the church flooded later in the year and he then gathered together the idea for his novel.

Mr Farrington, who served for eight years in the Army and is also a former Darlington & Stockton Times correspondent, said some of the proceeds from the book will be donated to the military mental health charity Combat Stress.

He said: “I served eight years in the Army and I heard recently that more service people had died by taking their own life following the Falklands conflict than had actually been killed in the war.
“Prior to my writing the book, I had already contributed to Combat Stress, so I decided to raise some money for them.”

The author will be signing copies of his book at branches of Waterstones in the North-East and North Yorkshire over the next few weeks.

He will be at the Scarborough store on August 4, Northallerton on August 8 and Darlington on August 11.