WHAT WOULD YOU READ if bombs were falling every night while you hunkered down in a crowded bomb shelter with only the light of a torch (a flashlight) to illuminate the page?
During such times, it’s a common reaction to want to immerse oneself in a fantasy world, preferably one that is light-hearted, funny, or totally different from the here and now. Today, during our own stressful times―war in the Middle East, escalating gas prices, global warming, innocent immigrants dying in our streets, and rising inflation―our minds need a release from the bad news that bombards us daily. More than one of my friends finds themselves on mystery novel binges. Others read one romance novel after another, though they normally wouldn’t touch such frivolous literature. One friend, in a modern variation of escapism reading, streams her favorite TV series from years ago.
I’m quite sure that British women during the blitz felt the same need for a release from stress as we do now.
In Ashes and Ruins, while Clara knits, Edith finds comfort in reading.
When still in Germany, to help perfect her English, Edith read The Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christy. Five years later, in 1942, she snuggled up on the sofa with a light romance given to her by a work friend. Edith described the novel, Clothes-Pegs, by Susan Scarlett, as “a simple Cinderella romance. Working-class girl falls in love with a lord, and so on. . . . The best thing is that though the story takes place in London and the main characters are a contemporary, working-class family, there is no mention of the war, or bombs, or rations.”
Noel Streatfeild was mainly a writer of children’s fiction, but under the pen-name Susan Scarlett, she also wrote close to thirty novels for adults, including twelve light romances like the one Edith read. As I wrote Ashes and Ruins, I read three of them myself and thoroughly enjoyed these light romps, especially for their insight into jobs available to young women in the 1930s and 40s.
Clothes-Pegs, published in 1939, is about a young seamstress who is promoted to the status of model in a London fashion house. In it there were parallels to Edith’s days as a seamstress, though she was advanced to being a designer, rather than a model. Sally-Ann, also written in 1939, tells the story of a working-class girl who finds a job as a facial and make-up expert in a high-end beauty shop. She is sent to a country estate to do the makeup for a wealthy bride and, of course, meets and falls in love with the best man.
In Babbacombe’s the location is an upscale department store. Stuck in an elevator, the heroine meets a charming gentleman who turns out to be the store owner’s son. A fairytale romance ensues, complete with all the necessary stumbling blocks, including family objections and the girl’s nosey and unpleasant cousin. In all three of the books, the man is kind and loving, the girl’s family is caring, and she has a younger sibling who the rich man helps. Perfect escape literature all.
Like Edith, many wartime readers in England loved “Who-done-its.” Agatha Christie, who, by 1940, had written close to fifty books, was a favorite author. Her works included short story collections, as well as romance novels under the pen-name Mary Westmacott. However, Christie’s mystery and detective stories were, by far, the most popular. And Then There Were None was published in 1939 and has become one of the world’s best-selling mystery novels. Sad Cypress, Christie’s first Poirot novel, came out in 1940 and used the courtroom as a device to expose Poirot’s detective skills. Both were popular with readers during WWII.
During the Blitz, London libraries faced a huge demand for books to read while the bombs fell. There was a surge of interest in classics like Tolstoy’s War and Peace, which could last a reader through dozens of nights in a bomb shelter, and Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. More recent international bestsellers were also popular, notably Gone With the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell (published in 1936). The film based on the novel premiered in London in the spring of 1940 and ran continuously for four years despite the Blitz.
International intrigue and adventure novels proved their value as escapist literature too. The African Queen, by C.S. Forester (1935), included a strong woman, ample danger, and a man riddled with flaws. Like the appeal of The Outlander today, time travel adventures offered a way to escape the stresses of contemporary life. The Man Who Went Back, by Warwick Deeping, takes a man from 1939 to post-Roman Britain. L. Sprague de Camp’s Lest Darkness Fall sends a man from 1930s Italy, complete with Mussolini, back to the 6th century to try to stop a war.
Between September 1940 and May of 1941, the German Luftwaffe dropped bombs on London almost nightly. During those eight terrifying months, my grandmother Clara and her daughter Edith (fictionalized in Ashes and Ruins) sheltered with two small children and Edith’s husband, George, if he was home, in the stone wine cellar in their basement apartment. In the morning, the streets were littered with rubble and shell-shocked people.
In the spring of 1941, the bombing did not stop; it simply became less regular, and the destruction spread further afield, flattening huge swaths of Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, and Coventry. In Scotland, Glasgow was targeted, and, on the south coast, Portsmouth and Cardiff were hit. Nowhere was safe. Things like a thermos of hot tea, a cheese and potato sandwich, maybe an apple but most likely a carrot, handkerchiefs, tissues, a torch, and a deck of cards or a book got British civilians through long hours in backyard Anderson shelters, basements, and underground stations.
Luckily for readers, five years earlier in 1935, Penguin Books had begun publishing inexpensive paperbacks. Small enough to stick in a back pocket or purse, these cheap “six-penny” softcover books were sold in Woolworth’s and at train station kiosks, as well as in bookshops. The titles included favorites by Agatha Christie, novels by Aldous Huxley, Sinclair Lewis, and Ernest Hemingway, biographies, essay collections, and non-fiction like A Short History of the World (1922) by H.G. Wells. “Six-penny” books were color-coded on the spine and cover according to genre, making it easy for a buyer to grab a new book as they rushed to work or the shelter. An orange spine meant general fiction, while a green book guaranteed a suspenseful crime or mystery story.
I have no doubt that Edith had a few of these small paperbacks tucked away, especially on her long nighttime shifts as a housekeeper at the Cumberland Hotel. Today’s technology allows us to have a personal library saved to our palm-sized phone or slightly larger tablet. Book lovers, like me, who are unable to wait calmly at the doctor’s office or on automated hold without something to read, are prepared with audio books and e-books on our pocket-sized devices.
No matter the time or place, “Books are a Girl’s (and a Guy’s) Best Friend” . . . because they lift us out of the ordinary and take us to unexpected and exciting places.
What kind of books do you read to help relieve stress?
These are great titles that have become classics. I'm so glad readers during the ward had them during the Blitz.
I love that War and Peace shows up not because it's great but because it'll last you dozens of nights in a shelter. Length isn't a literary quality anymore, it's a supply calculation, alongside the thermos and the carrot. And you don't stop to point at it, which is exactly right.