Product Description

The extraordinary diaries of Thomas Cairns Livingstone represent twenty years of gorgeously idiosyncratic daily records of a middle-class Glasgow household, over a period spanning shortly before the Great War to the early 1930s. Thomas Cairns Livingstone, a mercantile book keeper, began his diaries in 1913, when he, his wife Agnes and their son 'wee Tommy' set up house in the Glasgow neighbourhood of Govanhill. For the next twenty years, Livingstone dutifully recorded each day's events in his Collins diaries, from small domestic dramas to troop movements as news of the Great War filtered back to the anxious home front. Rescued during a house clearance, the intricate details of these journals -- interspersed throughout with Livingstone's wonderfully warm and idiosyncratic illustrations -- provide a priceless record of the impression world events were making on the ordinary people at home and an extraordinary chronicle of the ups and downs of working-class life in the period immediately before, during and after the First World War.The details of the family's early life, notes about the (usually dreich) Glasgow weather, and comments on the carnage on the front and on the high seas, are written and illustrated with such warmth and charm that the story of this very ordinary household in the early part of the 20th century becomes completely addictive.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #89325 in Books
• Published on: 2008-09-15
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

Review
'The extraordinary diaries of an obscure Glasgow clerk who lived through the First World War and the Depression are set to become one of the publishing hits of the year' Observer

From the Inside Flap
In 1913 Thomas Cairns Livingstone began keeping a diary. A Glaswegian shipping clerk, he spent his days working, visiting friends, complaining about the weather and worrying about the rent. He had no idea he would live through one of the most tumultuous periods of global history: the First World War.

But as the crisis in Europe worsened and news filtered back to an anxious home front, Livingstone's commentary on family life, Scottish weather and his culinary attempts were soon interwoven with accounts of soldiers wounded, prisoners taken and submarines sunk. Illustrated throughout with Livingstone's wry, whimsical sketches, these remarkable diaries capture perfectly the uncertainty of the period and the effects of war on an ordinary working-class family for whom life had to - and did - go on.

Unique and utterly compelling, Tommy's War is beautifully written, touching and difficult to put down.

From the Back Cover
Wednesday, 5 August 1914

Weather same as yesterday.
Factor called here today for his rent, and got it. Imagine!!!!
Town full of Territorials. Getting ready for our country's defence. Britain declared war on Germany last night at 11pm. Now fighting: Britain, Germany, France, Austria, Belgium, Servia and Russia.
The biggest war in the world's history.