Now here is a book I have enjoyed reading and have startted all over again.
It is Alive, Alive Oh! and Other Things That Matter by Diana Athill .*
It covers the years after the Second World War when Ms Athill was in her late 20s and challenges that widely held view that the late 1940s and early 50s were drab.
On the contrary they were an exciting period full of new possibilities but above all a time of peace after six years of a hard war.
And so reflecting on the twin celebrations of VE and VJ Day she writes that these were not just celebrations of victory but more of peace and the chance to get on with lives interrupted by the conflict.
My own parents rarely talked of the war but for them and for others of their generation however necessary they thought the war might have been it put their lives on hold.
Sylvia in Ashton under Lyne once confided that that six years had robbed her of her adolescence.
But the essay is about far more than just the war and ranges over the exciting new ideas in fashion, home design and leisure, culminating with one of the early package tours to Corfu with Club Mediterranean, taking in the brilliant sunlight, the scenery and the smells of fresh herbs and lemons.
All this would be a fascinating enough but she also focuses on the changing political climate which ushered in not only the National Health Service but saw Britain divest itself of many of its former colonies and attempt to redress the inequalities of the past.
These then were “lovely years to live through.”*
And that just leaves me with the dilemma........ do I put it on the Christmas wish list or go out and get it from the local bookshop today?
I could of course wait and listen to the remaining four programmes.
We shall see.
Picture; cover of Alive, Alive Oh! and Other Things That Matter, and VE Day celebrators in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, 1945 from the Lloyd Collection
* Alive, Alive Oh! and Other Things That Matter, Diana Athill, Granta £12.99
It is Alive, Alive Oh! and Other Things That Matter by Diana Athill .*
On the contrary they were an exciting period full of new possibilities but above all a time of peace after six years of a hard war.
And so reflecting on the twin celebrations of VE and VJ Day she writes that these were not just celebrations of victory but more of peace and the chance to get on with lives interrupted by the conflict.
My own parents rarely talked of the war but for them and for others of their generation however necessary they thought the war might have been it put their lives on hold.
But the essay is about far more than just the war and ranges over the exciting new ideas in fashion, home design and leisure, culminating with one of the early package tours to Corfu with Club Mediterranean, taking in the brilliant sunlight, the scenery and the smells of fresh herbs and lemons.
All this would be a fascinating enough but she also focuses on the changing political climate which ushered in not only the National Health Service but saw Britain divest itself of many of its former colonies and attempt to redress the inequalities of the past.
These then were “lovely years to live through.”*
And that just leaves me with the dilemma........ do I put it on the Christmas wish list or go out and get it from the local bookshop today?
I could of course wait and listen to the remaining four programmes.
We shall see.
Picture; cover of Alive, Alive Oh! and Other Things That Matter, and VE Day celebrators in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, 1945 from the Lloyd Collection
* Alive, Alive Oh! and Other Things That Matter, Diana Athill, Granta £12.99
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