Love and War in London: The Mass Observation Wartime Diary of Olivia Crockett

by OliviaCrockett (Author), RobertMalcolm (Editor)

• Used

  Paperback
  2009

  $3.28

  Love & War in London is rooted in the extraordinary milieu of wartime London. Vibrant and engaging, Olivia Cockett's diary reveals her frustrations, fears, pleasures and self-doubts. She recorded her mood swings and tried to understand them, and wrote of her lover (a married man) and the intense relationship they had. As she and her friends and family in New Scotland Yard were swept up by the momentous events of another European war, she vividly reported on what she saw and heard in her daily life. Olivia Cockett was twenty-six years old in the summer of 1939, when she responded to an invitation from Mass Observation to 'ordinary' individuals to keep a diary of their everyday lives, attitudes, feelings and social relations. This book is an annotated, unabridged edition of her candid and evocative diary. It permits us to understand how one intelligent, imaginative woman struggled to make sense of her life, as the city in which she lived was drawn into the turmoil of a catastrophic war.