British historical fiction short stories featuring Rhys Maren
Featuring Rhys Maren, a Historical Story Investigator, the British historical fiction short stories are about forgotten and misunderstood human lives, set in Britain's recent past, particularly the Second World War, the Cold War and the decades that followed. Each story begins with something that has survived from the past: a photograph, document, recording, object, archive or other record that raises a question.
That question is only the beginning. Rhys follows what survives from the past wherever it leads, from one person to another and from the present into Britain's recent history. As he follows the records, he gradually comes to understand a human story that has been forgotten, misunderstood or left incomplete.
Written by Cecil Atley, the stories use records and other surviving evidence as a way into the lives of people and the choices, relationships, experiences and losses that shaped them. The historical detail is part of the journey, but the real subject is always human: understanding what a recovered story means and how that understanding changes the meaning of what Rhys found at the beginning.
Rhys Maren's work is ultimately about following what remains from the past until a human story that has been forgotten can be understood again.
The Rhys Maren stories
Archives of Ash
Rhys Maren is hired to examine a deepfake video that shows a teenager confessing to murder. He proves the video is fake by spotting a flaw in the eyes. Tracing the voice model used to create it, he discovers his dead grandmother's voice inside the training data. This leads him to Ashcombe Hall, a secret wartime listening station where his grandmother worked and a chain of custody that connects wartime recordings to a modern AI company. The recording left behind warns him not to open a tin, but he does and uncovers the truth.
The Welsh Archive
During a television programme about evidence, a caller named Elin sends in a colour photograph from 1921 taken in North Wales. Colour photography should not have existed there at that time. Rhys investigates and proves the photograph is genuine. He uncovers the hidden career of Thomas Ellwood, a Foreign Office clerk who worked for Edward Hales, taking photographs of ports, airfields and embassies to provide reliable visual evidence for the government. Thomas never sought credit for his work.
The Thin Chain
A plain envelope sends Rhys Maren to a hotel in Conwy, where he meets Anna Schmidt, the daughter of Tomasz Kovács and Hilde Schmidt. Tomasz’s papers reveal a Cold War career built around radar, unexplained returns and the deliberate ambiguity of what appeared on British screens. What begins as a family enquiry soon draws Rhys towards a story of hidden flights, altered records and the things that were never meant to be seen.
The Thirteenth Man
When an old photograph shows a lifeboatman whose name has disappeared from the record, Rhys Maren is asked to find out who he was. What begins with a single unnamed man leads into the history of one of the most dangerous rescues in the lifeboat service and the story of a German family whose name would later carry a cost of its own.
Forget Me Not
A quiet investigation into an act of remembrance becomes a meditation on how memory passes between generations. When Rhys Maren observes a woman placing Forget-Me-Nots against a blank section of a village war memorial, he begins tracing a forgotten airman whose name was never carved into stone. Through Gwynedd Evans's letters, photographs and recordings, he discovers that remembrance is not something we inherit but something we choose and that every generation must decide for itself whose stories deserve to survive.
Available from 27th October 2026
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Archives of Ash |
The Welsh Archive |
The Thin Chain |
The Thirteenth Man |
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| Kindle Unlimited | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| E-book | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Paperback | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | - |
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AI and My Writing
I use generative AI when writing these stories and I see no reason to hide it. It’s simply one of the tools I rely on during drafting and editing, whether I'm testing an idea, untangling a clunky passage, checking continuity or digging into research.
That doesn’t mean I accept everything it spits out. Far from it, it is totally unreliable. Most suggestions get questioned, heavily rewritten or tossed in the bin. I create and keep detailed characters guides including their voice together with setting information. Every final choice about the story is entirely mine.
I also employ a human editor who is fully involved in every story. AI can't replace that partnership, just like it can't replace my own judgment as the writer. I use it because it’s helpful, sometimes it catches something I missed or sparks a fresh angle and other times it gets things completely wrong which is more often than not.
I’d rather just be upfront about it. It's a tool I choose to use to shape stories, not something doing the writing for me.