More Home Front World War II Diaries

 

 

Back in October I wrote about this book which I'd borrowed from the library, read and enjoyed

 and I said that it would be good to have a copy to add to my other Home Front WWII diaries - and I had more than I realised!

 

What I forgot about were these other two which were on another shelf with books that I was hoping to read soon. Both had been around for several years waiting to be read.

And I've read both since the start of the year

Esther Rowley - Dogs, Goats, Bulbs and Bombs;Wartime Diaries of Exmouth and Exeter. Edited by John Folkes. and published in 2010.These diaries were found in an auction by the editor and thanks to a letter found among the pages could be attributed to Esther, a single woman who was in her 30's and lived with her mother in a large house in Exmouth. It's a fascinating look at the life of those who had money at the time and were able to purchase things that many found difficult to find. Esther is in the ATS at the beginning of the diaries in 1940 but later has to leave to take care of her elderly mother. She spends lots of time out and about walking her dogs, visiting neighbours and friends for tea, playing tennis, swimming in summer and having picnics.Gardening is her main pleasure and there are good details of all the plants she buys - things I didn't think were available during the war. A completely different war experience to people living in London or other cities. 

Joan Strange - Despatches From the Home Front; The War Diaries. Non Fiction. Edited by Chris McCooey. Published originally in 1989.  From January 1st 1939 to the end of the War, Joan Stange kept a diary. From the dramatic happening in other parts of the world to the local problems in Worthing. The book also includes a few newspaper  cuttings which are interesting.

I found this about her online 

Papers of Joan Strange (1902-1994)

Joan Colebrook Strange was born at Worthing in 1902. Her parents were George, a local draper, and Emily, and she had two sisters, Mollie and Kathleen, and a brother, Ken. She attended Worthing High School for Girls from 1913 to 1920, and subsequently trained and worked as a physiotherapist. Shortly before the Second War, she became involved in running the Worthing Refugee Committee, which was established in January 1939 to help people, mainly Jews, escaping from central Europe. During the war she kept a diary, which has been published as Despatches from the Home Front (1989). After the war, her work on behalf of refugees continued, raising money for displaced persons in Europe and fugitives from the Eastern Block countries. She made several visits to camps in Germany, which are recorded in detail in the scrapbooks and diaries listed below, regularly gave talks, and appeared on the popular radio show Woman's Hour in 1952. Some of the individuals and families she helped built new lives in England, and the Europeans of the 1940s and 1950s were later joined by Vietnamese and Ugandans in the 1960s and 70s. Many of them leave their mark among these records, in photographs and letters of thanks. Joan Strange died in 1994

 And then I still have this to read, another that's been around a while....waiting for the right mood.

It won't be read this month as I have all the library books to enjoy, but I will get to it eventually.

 Some other WWII diaries that I've read over the last 20 years but don't own are these.............

 

 

 

 

I reckon there aren't many more to be read unless other diaries are found in attics, or discovered in the Mass Observation Archives.....you never know.

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Sue