WW2 - home front books

[diamond lil]

There's an awful lot of good info in books about the Home Front during the war. From how to live on a few rashers bacon a week and feed a family of 8 with it, to tips on growing veg, to fascinating stuff re the blackout and the black market. One butcher slept in his back shop on xmas eve with a loaded shotgun to guard the turkeys How they had to adapt to the blackout and the accidents and crime it brought. The shortage of coal and soap and fat and sugar and everything that makes life normal. Plus the bombs. Makes you sit back and realise how good we have it now.

[Poledragon]

I have a good few of these books and they're just great Some are originals, but there are a number of reprints of various wartime pamphlets - the Sew and Save one is very good, as is Make Do and Mend. I've got some reprints of Margurite Patten's books and a few 1940's gardening books. The recent Jane Fearnley-Whittingstall's Ministry of Food is full of little anecdotes.

I blame eBay...

[Red Doe]

I`ve got Ministry of Food, Make Do and Mend, and Margeuritte Patten`s Victory Cookbook, love them all. I admit to a strong sense of wartime nostalgia, not because I was there! But because I had grandparents and uncles and aunts who loved to talk about it even though for them, there were plenty hard, and sometimes frightening times. For my gran in particular who lost her first hubby as he was shot down over Germany. Due to the times, it was four years before they would announce him dead and let her have a war widow`s pension. He`d gone back from leave and left her expecting her second child so left on her own with my dad to raise and one on the way, she had to take what work she could get, which was tattie howking in the fields. Her second child was stillborn as a result. It`s a mark of her character that when I said to her how hard that must have been she said "Well, I just had to get on with it all, nothing else to be done" and she proceeded to make a good life on the croft for herself and my dad, and later, my step grandad.
But it`s thanks to her mainly that I`ve an appreciation of old fashioned housekeeping and stockpiling in particular.

[diamond lil]

You couldn't ask my mother anything about her family or young days. I often tried but she would just say Oh never mind what's past, just get on with the future. Soooo annoying ! My dad was RAF and spent most of the war in Egypt and Libya and Corsica for some mad reason. He was a musician and found a fiddle in a cafe in Corsica, started to play, and was there for 5 hours playing La Marseillaise non-stop The cafe was in an uproar and they wouldn't let him out !
I will look up this Ministry of Food book, I don't know that one.

[Poledragon]

Here you go: http://amzn.to/gcmMdK

I really like it - I bought it because I thought it was a cookbook, which it is, but it's also full of lovely stories and funny anecdotes and odd little facts. I think she's also Hugh's mother

[diamond lil]

Ta. Will add it to my "I WANT" list...

[wildone_uk]

lost all my books in the fire,would love to get hold some more from that time

[Dutchie Delta]

You couldn't ask my mother anything about her family or young days. I often tried but she would just say Oh never mind what's past, just get on with the future. Soooo annoying !

Well... that probably means she had a very bad time Lil.

[diamond lil]

Yea, think so. Her family were Irish and there were ten of them, plus my grandad died youngish. My granny was dead tough - she was a speywife & read the cards for the whole village, and I think people were a bit scared of her.

[lisaloolibell]

think ill have another look through some of my ww2 books during half-term and remind myself what ive got. might have a play with my ARP gear too