A01=Kathleen Hey
A01=Patricia Malcolmson
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Age Group_Uncategorized
Author_Kathleen Hey
Author_Patricia Malcolmson
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B01=Robert Malcolmson
B01=Robert Malcomson
brooke bond
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=BM
Category=DNC
Category=HBTB
Category=JBSF1
Category=JFSJ1
Category=NHTB
COP=United Kingdom
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dewsbury
diary
doubts
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eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
grocery shop
Kathleen Hey
Language_English
mass-observation project
misery
PA=Available
Price_€10 to €20
PS=Active
second world war
sense of humour
softlaunch
strong woman
tensions
war
world war ii
yorkshire
Product details
- ISBN 9781471154010
- Dimensions: 130 x 198mm
- Publication Date: 21 Apr 2016
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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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.
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.
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.
