So, it turns out that Blackout is only half a stinking book. It ends right in the middle and it’s all, like, “Stay tuned!” But I’m totally right there in 1940 right now, damn it! The boyfriend’s alarm went off this morning and I thought it was the sirens. I need more fix.
Is there any other really good fiction set in the time period? I don’t want soldier’s D-Day stories or American stuff or whatever - I want things set in London with blackout curtains and the ARP and “Hitler Can Break Our Windows But He Can’t Beat Our Prices!” But nothing dumb and schmaltzy, and nothing silly and inaccurate.
I’d also like to read more nonfiction on the subject, but I only want stuff from a social, people-centered viewpoint. I don’t really care about strategy or tonnage or whatever. Send that book to my boyfriend - he’ll also want the planespotter guide. He can keep it.
Suggestions? I’m sure there’s tons and tons of books - the trouble is sorting through them for the good stuff.
I can’t help on the fiction front, but for nonfiction accounts of life in the UK during WWII, I really enjoyed Norman Longmate’s How We Lived Then.
It’s a bit older, with the first edition published in the 1970s, and it’s not entirely London-centric, but it’s based on interviews from people living all over the UK throughout the war and their experiences of everyday life, from things like planning weddings and trying to buy baby clothes to grousing about rationing and leaky bomb shelters. While it does, IIRC, touch on some military stuff, it’s only in the context of how it affected people’s lives, so it is very much a social history type of book.
I had some difficulty at first tracking down a copy of my own in the US after I grabbed a copy from my university library and wanted to buy my own (after the library copy disappeared one day :(), but there’s a new edition that’s been out for a few years now, so you ought to be able to find it more easily now.
Not a book - but the BBC organised a huge project a few years ago to collect ordinary people’s recollections of the war. They ended up with 47,000 submissions covering all aspects of the conflict, but largely home front - they are all here:
You may be pissed at Connie Willis right now, but she has a couple of short stories set during the Blitz. “Firewatch” is about the efforts to preserve St. Paul’s Cathedral, and “Jack” is about a certain type of creature who takes advantage of the chaos of the Blitz. And “The Winds of Marble Arch” is sort of a ghost story about the bombing of the Marble Arch tube station.
There’s a new one out that’s getting good reviews – The Postmistress by Sarah Blake. I expect that some of the “people also bought” books listed on that page might also feature the Blitz.
To report - “How We Lived Then” is AMAZING and available via Kindle, albeit more expensive than many Kindle books. I’m not halfway through but am enjoying it immensely and it’s an amazing work of scholarship - head and shoulders above any similar work I’ve read, Studs Terkel and all.
“Foyle’s War” we’re also enjoying quite a bit - the lead actor has quite a face.