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 s...

The remarkable wartime diary of nurse Kathleen Johnstone‘Warm, chatty and endlessly absorbing, this delightful diary brims with intelligence and humour.’ Wendy Moore, author of Endell Street: The Women Who Ran Britain’s Trailblazing Military HospitalThe second world war could not have been won without the bravery and selflessness of women on the Home Front. Women like Kathleen Johnstone.This first-hand story of one extraord...

'I can never understand how the scribbles of such an ordinary person ... can possibly have value.'So wrote Nella Last in her diary on 2 September 1949. Sixty years on, tens of thousands of people have read and enjoyed the first two volumes of her uniquely detailed and moving diaries, written during World War II and its aftermath as part of the Mass Observation project, and the basis for BAFTA-winning drama Housewife 49 starring Victoria Wood....

Outwardly Nella's life was probably seen as ordinary; but behind this mask were a lively mind and a persistent pen - a pen that never gave up over almost three decades, reporting, describing, pondering, and disclosing. Nella, 55 when the war ends, writes of what ordinary people felt during those years of privation, hope and the re-building of Britain, providing a moving and inspiring account of the years that shaped the society we live in today. Her diary offers a detailed, moving and humo...

'I can never understand how the scribbles of such an ordinary person ... can possibly have value.' So wrote Nella Last in her diary on 2 September 1949. More than sixty years on, tens of thousands of people have read and enjoyed three volumes of her vivid and moving diaries, written during the Second World War and its aftermath as part of the Mass Observation project - and the basis for BAFTA-winning drama Housewife 49 starring Victoria Wood. The Diaries of Nella Last, brings together into...

The remarkable wartime diary of nurse Kathleen Johnstone‘Warm, chatty and endlessly absorbing, this delightful diary brims with intelligence and humour.’ Wendy Moore, author of Endell Street: The Women Who Ran Britain’s Trailblazing Military HospitalThe second world war could not have been won without the bravery and selflessness of women on the Home Front. Women like Kathleen Johnstone.This first-hand story of one extraord...

From the summer of 1938, British women from all walks of life joined the Women's Voluntary Services (WVS). This disparate band of women came together for the common good - to help serve and protect their communities. By 1941 a million women had enrolled.These brave and dutiful women played a vital role in Britain's victory. The positive impact of the WVS on wartime society was universally acknowledged. They were instrumental in implementing the large-scale evacuation of children fr...

One forgotten street, 12 unforgettable women.‘’Ang on boy, Joan’s got sumfink to show yer.’ She rummaged in a drawer for a moment, pulled out a piece of paper and handed it to me.‘Constance Street,’ she said. ‘As I remember it.’Through the story of one street – Constance Street – we hear the true life tales of a tight knit group of working class women in the East End of London set against a backdrop of war, hardship and struggle.It’s a story of matriarchy an...

The Blitz had made many families in the East End of London homeless. One solution was to erect prefabs on fields and open spaces to give temporary accommodation to those who had been bombed out. It was in one of these 'modern' boxes that young Norman Jacobs grew up through the 1950s and 1960s. In a lively, detailed and humorous picture of a postwar Hackney childhood, Norman takes us back to an age of rationing, bomb sites, street markets, colourful characters and camaraderie. And in remini...

"William Tallon was a creature of extremes: though intensely loyal, he was also a dangerous risk-taker; though charming, he could also be vicious; though considerate and amusing, he could be ruthless and predatory. For much of his life he was driven by two demons: a powerful sex drive and an intense, almost pathological love for the Queen Mother…"From humble beginnings as a shopkeeper's son in Coventry to 'Page of the Backstairs' at Clarence House, William Tallon, or 'Back...

Nonna Bannister carried a secret almost to her Tennessee grave: the diaries she had kept as a young girl experiencing the horrors of the Holocaust. This book reveals that story. Nonna's childhood writings, revisited in her late adulthood, tell the remarkable tale of how a Russian girl from a family that had known wealth and privilege, then exposed to German labor camps, learned the value of human life and the importance of forgiveness. This story of loss, of love, and of forgiveness is one...

The personal accounts of three young women who joined up in 1940.In the summer of 1940, Britain stood alone against Germany. The British Army stood at just over one and a half million men, while the Germans had three times that many, and a population almost twice the size of ours from which to draw new waves of soldiers. Clearly, in the fight against Hitler, manpower alone wasn’t going to be enough.Eighteen-year-old Jessie Ward defied her mother to join the ATS, Margery Pot...