Category: Nonfiction November

Book Review: Christmas at War by Caroline Taggart

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Christmas at WarAbout the Book

No turkey. No fruit to make a decent pudding. No money for presents. Your children away from home to keep them safe from bombing; your husband, father and brothers off fighting goodness knows where. How in the world does one celebrate Christmas?

That was the situation facing the people of Britain for six long years during the Second World War. For some of them, Christmas was an ordinary day: they couldn’t afford merrymaking – and had little to be merry about. Others, particularly those with children, did what little they could.

These first-hand reminiscences tell of making crackers with no crack in them and shouting ‘Bang!’ when they were pulled; of carol-singing in the blackout, torches carefully covered so that no passing bombers could see the light, and of the excitement of receiving a comic, a few nuts and an apple in your Christmas stocking. They recount the resourcefulness that went into makeshift dinners and hand-made presents, and the generosity of spirit that made having a happy Christmas possible in appalling conditions.

From the family whose dog ate the entire Christmas roast, leaving them to enjoy ‘Spam with all the trimmings’, to the exhibition of hand-made toys for children in a Singapore prison camp, the stories are by turns tragic, poignant and funny. Between them, they paint an intriguing picture of a world that was in many ways kinder, less self-centered, more stoical than ours. Even if – or perhaps because – there was a war on.

Format: Paperback, ebook (304 pp.)    Publisher: John Blake
Published: 1st November 2018 Genre: Nonfiction, History

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk  ǀ  Amazon.com  ǀ Hive.co.uk (supporting UK bookshops)
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find Christmas at War on Goodreads

My Review

Subtitled ‘True Stories of How Britain Came Together on the Home Front’, Christmas at War is an interesting collection of firsthand accounts and excerpts from contemporary articles, journals and letters about people’s recollections of Christmas during the years of the Second World War.

I liked the the way the author used phrases from the reminiscences as chapter headings, such as ‘You’ll Have to Have Shop Butter From Now On’.   I also loved the photographs in the book.  My particular favourite was one of an Anderson shelter decorated for Christmas which really epitomises the spirit of the contributions to the book.   One small niggle was what seemed like inconsistent formatting of the text.  However, I eventually worked out that verbatim accounts were shown in normal text and excerpts from letters or diaries shown in italics.

The book commences with evacuees’ recollections of Christmas away from their families, with some better than those they’d experienced previously and others just different.  For example, Christmas in the country versus in the city with one contributor remarking that ‘out in the country in the 1940s you were still pretty much in the nineteenth century’.  Evacuees recall new experiences – different Christmas food and traditions, for example – but also loneliness, cruelty, even physical abuse.  I was surprised to learn of the lack of government pre-planning for evacuation with organisers in some cases  knocking on doors to find people willing to take in evacuees.

In the chapter entitled ‘Thank Goodness…Now We Can Get Some Sleep’, contributors recall nights spent in public shelters when, contrary to what you might expect, they found they slept better once the air raid warning had sounded because the uncertainty was over.  Sharing a shelter with so many other people didn’t provide much privacy. ‘There was an Elsan toilet pan surrounded only by a heavy hessian curtain.   People used to time their bodily functions to coincide with bomb or gunfire or aircraft flying overhead…’ However, many recall the so-called ‘Second Great Fire of London’, the night of 29th December 1940, when a hundred thousand incendiary bombs and twenty-four thousand high-explosive bombs (yes, you read those numbers right) were dropped on London.

Much of the book is given over to reminiscences about the shortage of luxury goods and foodstuffs typically associated with Christmas and the ingenuity required to conjure up anything resembling festive fare.   Hence the many recipes for ‘mock’ something or other that prevailed at the time.  Similar ingenuity was required when it came to Christmas decorations and presents with much use of recycled items, hand-me-downs, homemade presents and gifts courtesy of ‘bring and buy’ sales.  That was unless you had useful contacts who could obtain goods in short supply or were fortunate enough to benefit from the generosity of strangers.  And, of course, with television off air for the duration of the war, with the exception of the radio, entertainment had to be of the homemade variety too: sing-a-longs round the piano, card games, board games and charades.

What really came home to me reading the book was how many of the things we now associate with Christmas were absent from people’s lives.  For example, all the church bells were silenced, only to be rung if invasion was imminent.  Gatherings of family and friends were necessarily limited by petrol rationing, evacuation, people serving overseas, loved ones confined as prisoners-of-war and restrictions on leave. Despite all of this, people continued to make a valiant effort to celebrate Christmas in whatever way they could.  Whether in hospitals, on active service overseas or even confined as prisoners-of war, people tried their best to create some festive spirit.

The book ends on a more sombre note, acknowledging that the last Christmas of the war (1944) was one of contradictions.  There was optimism that Germany was close to defeat.  On the other hand, 1944 had seen the most devastating bombardment of London, including with the dreaded ‘Doodlebugs’, killing and injuring many and resulting in the destruction of homes, businesses and infrastructure.

Christmas at War was one of the books from my NonFictionNovember reading list.   It made the perfect literary companion to a historical fiction book I read shortly before –  A Ration Book Christmas (see the ‘Try Something Similar’ section below).  I believe Christmas at War would make an ideal Christmas gift for anyone with an interest in social history or the Second World War and how it affected the daily lives of ordinary people.

I received a review copy courtesy of publishers, John Blake, and Readers First.

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In three words: Fascinating, authentic, inspiring

Try something similar…A Ration Book Christmas by Jean Fullerton (read my review here)

Caroline TaggartAbout the Author

Caroline writes: ‘I was an editor for 30 years before Michael O’Mara Books asked me to write what became I Used to Know That. I think its success took everyone by surprise – it certainly did me – but it led to my writing a lot of other books and finally, after about three years, feeling able to tell people I was an author. It’s a nice feeling.

Until recently the book I was most proud of was The Book of London Place Names (Ebury), partly because I am passionate about London and partly because, having written ten or so books before that, I finally felt I was getting the hang of it.

Now I have to confess I’m really excited by my first venture into continuous narrative. For A Slice of Britain: Around the Country by Cake (AA) I travelled the country investigating, writing about and eating cake. From Cornish Saffron Cake to Aberdeen Butteries, I interviewed about 25 people who are baking cakes, biscuits and buns that are unique to their region, part of their heritage – and pretty darned delicious. The Sunday Times reviewed it and described me as ‘engaging, greedy and droll’, which pleased me enormously.’  (Photo credit: Goodreads author page)

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Buchan of the Month/Book Review: Memory Hold-the-Door by John Buchan

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Buchan of the Month

MemoryHoldTheDoorAbout the Book

John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir (1875-1940) completed his autobiography not long before his death. A highly accomplished man, his was a life of note. Although now known by many chiefly as an author, he was also an historian, Unionist politician and Governor General of Canada. Although he stated that it was not strictly an autobiography, Memory Hold-the-Door provides a reflective, personal account of his childhood in Scotland, his literary work from his time at Oxford University to the famous Hannay and Leithen stories and his extensive public service in South Africa, Scotland, France in the Great War, and Canada. Known in the United States as Pilgrim’s Way, Memory Hold-the-Door was reportedly one of the favourite books of John F. Kennedy.

Format: Hardcover         Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Published: 1964 [1940]  Genre: Nonfiction, Memoir

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk ǀ Amazon.com
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find Memory Hold-the-Door on Goodreads

My Review

Memory Hold-the-Door is the penultimate book in my Buchan of the Month reading project for 2018.  You can find out more about the project plus my reading list for 2018 here and read my introduction to the book here.   Memory Hold-the-Door is also one of the books I read for Nonfiction November.

On 5th February 1940, Buchan wrote to his sister, Anna, ‘I have finished my novel [Sick Heart River] and my autobiography’. The following day, Buchan suffered the cerebral thrombosis that ultimately proved fatal and he died on 12th February.  Some time before Buchan had told a correspondent that Memory Hold-the-Door was ‘not an ordinary autobiography or any attempt to tell the unimportant story of my life; but rather an attempt to pick out certain high lights and expound the impressions made upon me at different stages’.

Buchan made a deliberate choice not to write about anyone still alive, including family members, so there are only a few passing mentions of his wife and children in Memory Hold-the-Door.  There is, however, this lovely sentiment: ‘I have been happy in many things, but all my other good fortune has been as dust  in the balance compared with the blessing of an incomparable wife.’

There are generous and astute pen pictures of contemporary figures of note with whom Buchan came into contact during a life and career that encompassed the law, colonial administration, publishing, journalism, work in military intelligence, service as an MP and as Governor-General of Canada, as well as the writing for which he is now best known.  Such figures include Lord Grey, Arthur Balfour, Lord Haig and King George V.

Of the latter, Buchan writes: ‘He did me the honour to be amused by my romances [by which Buchan means his adventure stories and historical novels], and used to make acute criticisms on questions of fact.  Of one, a poaching story of the Highlands [which I assume to be John Macnab], he gave me a penetrating analysis, but he approved of it sufficiently to present many copies of it to his friends.’

I particularly enjoyed Buchan’s portrait of his friendship with T. E. Lawrence which to me appears insightful despite Buchan’s own remark that ‘there is no brush fine enough to catch the subtleties of his mind, no aerial viewpoint high enough to being into one picture the manifold of his character’.   Buchan recalls, ‘He would turn up without warning at Elsfield [Buchan’s Oxfordshire home] at any time of the day or night on his motor-cycle Boanerges, and depart as swiftly and mysteriously as he came’.  Buchan remembers Lawrence’s ‘delightful impishness’ but also his depression following what he considered his failure on behalf of the Arabs.  Buchan writes: ‘In 1920 his whole being was in grave disequilibrium.  You cannot in any case be nine time wounded, four times in an air crash, have many bouts of fever and dysentery, and finally at the age of twenty-nine take Damascus at the head of an Arab army, without living pretty near the edge of your strength’.  Quite.

Most touching are the portraits of friends, many of whom sadly died in the First World War (as did one of Buchan’s brothers, Alastair) .  Some of these portraits also appear in Buchan’s book These For Remembrance, originally privately printed.

Elsewhere in Memory Hold-the-Door he writes about his student days (including some high jinks) at Oxford University, his admiration for America and its people, his love of fishing and mountaineering, and his experience of the absurdities of the House of Commons (which I suspect may be largely unchanged).  ‘There are seats for only about three-fourths of the members, and these seats are uncomfortable; the ventilation leaves the head hot and the feet cold; half the time is spent dragging wearily in and out of lobbies, voting on matters about which few members know anything; advertising mountebanks can waste a deal of time; debates can be as dull as a social science congress in the provinces…’  However, for balance, he does go on to say that ‘speeches are shorter and of a far higher quality than in any other legislative assembly’.

The book is written in Buchan’s customary effortless prose style and while some of the people he writes about may no longer be familiar to or of interest to the modern reader, it does give a fascinating insight into an admittedly elite stratum of society of that time and Buchan’s personal philosophy and beliefs or his ‘creed’ as he refers to it.  About his own writing, he describes himself as a ‘copious romancer’ and ‘a natural story-teller, the kind of man who for the sake of his yarns would in prehistoric days have been given a seat by the fire and a special chunk of mammoth’.

One of Buchan’s last acts as Governor-General of Canada was to sign that country’s entry into the Second World War.  With remarkable prescience, he writes in the final chapters of Memory Hold-the-Door of his fears for the future.  ‘We have lived by toleration, rational compromise and freely expressed opinion, and we have lived very well.  But we had come to take these blessings for granted, like the air we breathed. […] Today we have seen those principles challenged… We have suddenly discovered that what we took for the enduring presuppositions of our life are in danger of being destroyed.’   Indeed, Buchan had remarked earlier in the book that ‘the study of [history] is the best guarantee against repeating it’.

Next month’s Buchan of the Month is Sick Heart River, Buchan’s last novel which was published posthumously.  Along with Mr. Standfast, it is my favourite of his novels.  Look out for my introduction to the book next week and my review towards the end of the month.

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In three words: Reflective, friendship, personal

Try something similar…Unforgettable, Unforgotten by Anna Buchan

John BuchanAbout the Author

John Buchan (1875 – 1940) was an author, poet, lawyer, publisher, journalist, war correspondent, Member of Parliament, University Chancellor, keen angler and family man.  He was ennobled and, as Lord Tweedsmuir, became Governor-General of Canada.  In this role, he signed Canada’s entry into the Second World War.   Nowadays he is probably best known – maybe only known – as the author of The Thirty-Nine Steps.  However, in his lifetime he published over 100 books: fiction, poetry, short stories, biographies, memoirs and history.

You can find out more about John Buchan, his life and literary output by visiting The John Buchan Society website.