KEIGHLEY features in a new romantic novel set during the era of the Second World War.

Author James Lingard has devoted an entire chapter to his family’s time in the town, during the years immediately after the conflict.

The Girl Who Disappeared – to be launched on January 14 as a paperback and e-book – is substantially set in Keighley, as well as Halifax and Hebden Bridge.

“Chapter 18 is devoted to the years my family spent in Keighley,” said Mr Lingard.

“My father was manager of the Lloyds Bank branch in the town from 1947 until the early 1950s.

“I well remember the town as it then was.”

The Girl Who Disappeared is a historical novel, inspired by real events.

‘Heroine’ Emily falls passionately in love with working-class Walter.

But the relationship is fiercely opposed by Emily’s class-conscious father.

Her actions see her struggle to survive the devastation which follows during the Second World War.

The family has to contend with rationing and the terror of bombings.

And when Walter volunteers for the army, Emily and her young son are evacuated to a rat-infested cottage in a farming community.

“The war changes Walter into an efficient army officer and Emily worries that she might have a rival for his affections,” says Mr Lingard, who adds that he has been delighted by early reviews of the novel.

One reviewer described it as “hard to put down” and “a very well-defined – and at times frightening – view of life in Britain during World War II”.

Mr Lingard attended University College London and became a leading solicitor in the City of London, specialising in banking law and insolvency.

He was a council member of the Association of Business Recovery Professionals and the European Association of Insolvency Practitioners, and judicial chairman of the Insolvency Practitioners Tribunal.

He’s the original author of Lingard’s Bank Security Documents and a number of other legal books, and more recently wrote Britain at War 1939 to 1945.

The Girl Who Disappeared is published by Clink Street Publishing – copies can be pre-ordered through it and Amazon.