The View from the Corner Shop: Diary of a Wartime Shop Assistant

Kathleen Hey, Patricia Malcolmson, Robert Malcolmson

ISBN 10: 1471154017 / ISBN 13: 9781471154010

Editore: Simon & Schuster UK, 2016

The View from the Corner Shop: Diary of a Wartime Shop Assistant This book is in very good condition and will be shipped within 24 hours of ordering. The cover may have some limited signs of wear but the pages are clean, intact and the spine remains undamaged. This book has clearly been well maintained and looked after thus far. Money back guarantee if you are not satisfied. See all our books here, order more than 1 book and get discounted shipping. . Codice articolo 7719-9781471154010

Riassunto:

A lively diary chronicling the ups and downs of running a grocery shop in a Yorkshire town during the rationing years of the Second World War

Kathleen Hey spent the war years helping her sister and brother-in-law run a grocery shop in the Yorkshire town of Dewsbury. From July 1941 to July 1946 she kept a diary for the Mass-Observation project, recording the thoughts and concerns of the people who used the shop.

What makes Kathleen's account such a vivid and compelling read is the immediacy of her writing. People were pulling together on the surface ('Bert has painted the V-sign on the shop door…', she writes) but there are plenty of tensions underneath. The shortage of food and the extreme difficulty of obtaining it is a constant thread, which dominates conversation in the town, more so even than the danger of bombardment and the war itself.

Sometimes events take a comic turn. A lack of onions provokes outrage among her customers, and Kathleen writes, 'I believe they think we have secret onion orgies at night and use them all up.' The Brooke Bond tea rep complains that tea need not be rationed at all if supply ships were not filled with 'useless goods' such as Corn Flakes, and there is a long-running saga about the non-arrival of Smedley's peas.

Among the chorus of voices she brings us, Kathleen herself shines through as a strong and engaging woman who refuses to give in to doubts or misery and who maintains her keen sense of humour even under the most trying conditions. A vibrant addition to our records of the Second World War, the power of her diary lies in its juxtaposition of the everyday and the extraordinary, the homely and the universal, small town life and the wartime upheavals of a nation.

L'autore: Kathleen Hey was born on 17 March 1906, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, the youngest of four children. Her diary exists in the Mass Observation Archive but does not chronicle the date of her death. To the best of the editors' knowledge, she died without leaving descendants.

Dati bibliografici

Titolo: The View from the Corner Shop: Diary of a ...
Casa editrice: Simon & Schuster UK
Data di pubblicazione: 2016
Legatura: Paperback
Condizione: Very Good