Product Description

A 600 page diary kept from 194-45 in Notting Hill Gate, full of observation and humour. Preface by Jenny Hartley.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #252208 in Books
• Published on: 1999-09-22
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 624 pages

The Tallahassee Democrat Review September 2001
'Still vibrant and helpful today...a poignant, honest, frightening, yet heartwarming record of one articulate woman's coping with war.'

About the Author
Winifred VERE HODGSON was born in 1901 in Edgbaston, Birmingham,
where her widowed mother ran the family home as a boarding house. Vere,
named after an uncle who was the marine biologist on Captain Scott's ship,
read History at Birmingham University, taught first at the Poggio
Imperiale, the former Summer Palace of the grand dukes of Tuscany which
had been turned into a 'rather select girls' school' (Mussolini's daughter
was a pupil), and later on at a school in Folkestone. From the early
1930s she helped to run a local charity in Notting Hill Gate. Vere kept a
diary from girlhood onwards and in 1976 edited her 1940-45 diaries for
publication as Few Eggs and No Oranges. After her retirement she went to
live in the village of Church Stretton in Shropshire, where she died in
1979.

Customer Reviews

Ordinary people, extraordinary times
Vere Hodgson's book is subtitled "A diary showing how unimportant people in London and Birmingham lived through the war years". This wonderful book is so much more than that. Hodgson's diary brought home to me more than anything else I've read about London in the Blitz just how difficult life was. London rarely seemed to have an uninterrupted night. Think how cranky you feel after one night's broken sleep and multiply this many times. Add the constant worry about family and friends in the services or living in areas prone to bombing, apart from the fact that you could never be sure if you were safe in your own house, and you have some idea of the life endured by Vere Hodgson and her circle. Hodgson felt it showed a lack of patriotism to complain too much and her good humour shines through, even when she must have sometimes felt like having a good grumble. Although her long diary (over 600 pp) sometimes seems to be a constant catalogue of bombing raids and worries over rations, it is always absorbing reading. She comments on all the war news, and her extravagant enthusiasm for Churchill makes me sorry for the cynicism with which we look at politicians today. I recommend this book to anyone who wants a picture of London during the Blitz through the eyes of an "unimportant" person.

A one-of-a-kind record of wartime London
I was drawn to Ms. Hodgson's book, not only because of my interest in wartime Britain, but because she was a social worker, as I am. The book proved a marvellous record of daily life during the Blitz -- so "daily" in fact, that I'm sure many would find it boring and repetitive (STILL No Eggs and Few Oranges???), but I feel that this is what made it work. As I read the book, I began to feel a part of life in a London kept awake by nightly bombardment -- or fear of it. I recommend this book to anyone who wishes to capture the flavor of this vanished time.

Personal Diary of WW2
This diary was kept by Vere Hodgson during WW2 with a view to sending it to her cousin abroad, as a record of life in England during the War. I found it absolutely fascinating. Of course I knew most of the facts, but this book brings to life the everyday fears and problems suffered in particular by Londoners as their city was at times continuously under attack. Unlike any other book I have read, the outcome of the War was not known by Vere Hodgson as it was written as a diary, so at various times it seemed likely to her that the Germans might actually be the conquerors. The terror of the Blitz, then the V1 and V2 bombs, as well as the devastation of London, are described in detail. Vere Hodgson got on with her life bravely, as so many other Londoners did, under unimaginable strains, and she writes of her working day, work colleagues and family all coping to various degrees. She writes well and is unsentimental. I highly recommended this book.