We are at War: The Diaries of Five Ordinary People in Extraordinary Times

by SimonGarfield (Author)

• Used

  Illustrated
  2006

  $3.25

  Of all the accounts written about the Second World War, none are more compelling than the personal diaries of those who lived through it. We Are At War is the story of five everyday folk, who, living on the brink of chaos, recorded privately on paper their most intimate hopes and fears. Pam Ashford, a woman who keeps her head when all around are losing theirs, writes with comic genius about life in her Glasgow shipping office. Christopher Tomlin, a writing-paper salesman for whom business is booming, longs to be called up like his brother. Eileen Potter organises evacuations for flea-ridden children, while mother-of-three Tilly Rice is frustrated to be sent to Cornwall. And Maggie Joy Blunt tries day-by-day to keep a semblance of her ordinary life. Entering their world as they lived it, each diary entry is poignantly engrossing. Amid the tumultuous start to the war, these ordinary British people are by turns apprehensive and despairing, spirited and cheerful - and always fascinatingly, vividly real.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2005

  $4.20

  Snowdrops have been in flower for weeks. Violets are still waiting to bloom. Broad beans are showing their heads perkily. But I forget. We are at war. The boys in the village are leaving one by one. - Maggie Joy Blunt. We Are At War continues Simon Garfield's successful formula of interweaving five ordinary lives from the Mass-Observation archive begun with Our Hidden Lives . Of all the accounts written about the Second World War, none are more compelling than the personal diaries composed by those who lived through it. Beginning in the weeks before the war, and ending a year later with the Battle of Britain, the book will tell the story of the 'phoney war' on the home front. The five ordinary diarists are: Pam Ashford, an unmarried secretary at a large Glasgow shipping merchant; Tilly Rice, who moves her children to safety in Cornwall, but returns to her home in Surrey just as the bombs start to fall; Eileen Potter, a social worker in central London; Christopher Tomlin, a God-fearing salesman doing the rounds in Preston; and Maggie Joy Blunt, familiar to readers of Our Hidden Lives as an elegant and reflective writer.