Product Description

The diary of Colin Albert Perry, born in Camberwell in 1922. When war broke out on 3rd Sep 1939 he was a junior clerk with the California Standard Oil Company in the Royal Bank of Canada in the heart of London. His diary ended in November 1940 when he joined the Merchant Navy as a ship's writer.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #330398 in Books
• Published on: 2000-09-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Customer Reviews

Very readable account of life in war-time London in 1940
This book gives a first-hand account of life in London during the blitz in 1940. As such it is a valuable document as it does convey the intensity of the experience. It is the diary of Colin Perry who was a teenager at the time, living and working in London. It is written with the idealism and optimism of youth and as such gives an interesting perspective on historic events. As we move further and further from World War 2, books such as these become invaluable in giving the reader a real insight into what it was like to live in a city under constant bombardment. The book has a good balance of personal detail, mixed with detail of matters of national interest. My main complaint is that the book left me wanting to know the rest of the author's story. Perry fills his 1940 diary with his plans and hopes for the future, particularly his hope for a wife and children and I would have loved to have read a sequel which told what happened to these dreams. Well worth reading, in fact once started it is hard to put down!

Fascinating
I picked up this book almost by accident at the Imperial War Museum and was immediately captivated. Colin Perry writes of his experiences during 1940 whilst living in Tooting, South London (incidentally where I also live). his account in the form of his diary reveals a much different teenager and also a much diferent London than that which we expect to find today. His love life reveals a touching innocence definately not found today and his exceptionally well written accounts of bombing incidents and general day to day life in London imparts so much more of the flavour of the time than a dry text book. He seems to display a pragmatic attitude "if I get it I get it" and refuses to spend much time in the shelters, preferring to watch the dog fights and the shrapnel raining down from the summer skies.

You can read that a bomb fell on Balham Tube Station and it means very little, but when you read Colin's account of them drowning and dying llike "rats in a cage" and know that all this was happening only a mile or so away from his house, it becomes much more poignant. He writes that a woman dies only a street away "with a drainpipe through her bosom" and goes onto say in disbelief "and this is Tooting". It all makes it seem very real.

I would recommend anyone to read this book for a real window onto the past.