1940's House
By Juliet Gardiner
Forward by Norman Longmate
Channel 4 Books / Pan Macmillan
May 2000
ISBN: 0-7522-6514-8
256 Pages, Illustrated, 7 1/2" x 9 3/4"
$25.95 paper original
OUT OF PRINT
For the Hymer Family, the Second World War began more than sixty years after Chamberlain's announcement. For them, war broke out on 15 April 2000, when they left their Yorkshire hometown for a 1930s semi-detached house in Kent, under the skies where the Battle of Britain was fought. In the weeks spent in the 1940s house, the family experienced the hardships, constrictions and uncertainties of those wartime years, complete with gas masks, searchlights, ration books and an Anderson shelter. Living through many different aspects of life on the home front - from the outbreak of war in 1939 to the relief of VE Day - the realities of war were brought sharply into focus for the Hymers. Taking their orders in day-to-day living from government instructional pamphlets, they were told how to behave in an air raid shelter, to eat National Wholemeat Bread, to "Save for Victory" and even to help build a plane. Initiative, common sense and practicality were paramount at all times. So what did Spam really taste like? How hard was it to spin out a week's rations when each person got an only an ounce of cheese and two ounces of tea, and lemons were a distant memory? Could you have lived with the blackout, and coped in the confines of an Anderson shelter? And, on the lighter side, how good would you have been at the jitterbug? This book is illustrated with Simon Robert's intimate photography and contemporary materials from the Imperial War Museum's Archives. Juliet Gardiner has drawn on a wealth of materials from the time including the letters and diaries of many Home Front veterans, building up an intricate account of this piece of our history. This priceless information, interweaved with the Hymers' story, creates a unique insight into Second World War.
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