Synopsis
The authentic wartime diaries of Uncle Walter, aglow with the nostalgic eccentricity of 'Dad's Army' and full of 40s atmosphere.
The wartime diaries of Walter Musto were recently discovered by his great-nephew in a family attic. Contained in a dusty pile of notebooks filled with neat handwriting are the intimate thoughts of a sixty-year-old civil servant living in Surrey during the Second World War.
When Walter took up his diary on January 1st 1939, he was looking forward to retirement with his beloved wife Alice Mary and their ageing dog Nell, and spending more time in his garden. Walter was too old to fight, but he organized his ARP fire-watch unit and, spurred on by the cry of 'Dig for victory!', grew mountains of vegetables for the war effort. He also took up weaving and knitting scarves for the neighbourhood, but nothing gave him more pleasure than pottering in his greenhouse or sunbathing in the nude among his flowers, interrupted only by the wailing of an air-raid siren or plain bad weather.
In the spirit of THE DIARY OF A NOBODY, with more than an echo of DAD'S ARMY, Walter's idiosyncratic mix of social commentary and personal concerns captures the indomitable spirit that helped England endure the hardships of the Blitz. This charming diary is a welcome reminder that not all wars are fought on the front line.
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Présentation de l'éditeur
Approaching retirement from the civil service and at the age of 60, Walter Musto was looking forward to the quiet life with his wife Alice Mary and their dog Nell. He started writing his diary on January 1st 1939 and carried on throughout the entirety of the war years. Walter had the vision and intellectual prowess to document the daily goings on of the most cataclysmic events that the World had ever seen, from a perspective both inside and outside his doorstep. Within his diaries we are witness to his observations on the climate of destruction across England, especially London where he is travelling to work every day and enduring the effects of night raids during the blitz. Seeing how London and Londoners picked up the pieces and got on with the task of carrying on and maintaining some kind of structure of society and business whilst London and its transport hub was being battered like never before in history. As Walter was too old for active service, he joined the East Molesey ARP unit feeling that he was at least doing something active to help the war effort. He was a firm believer in the simple pleasures of life; gardening, his love of nature and wildlife and most fundamentally adhered to the practice of the wartime ‘Dig For Victory’ campaign. Walter’s mischievous and often hilarious portraits on Englishness and observations on human kind capture the spirit of a country at war, whereby his first-hand harrowing accounts of the progress of war and the destruction of his beloved country are also juxtaposed with the trivia, traumas and detail of domestic life.
Présentation de l'éditeur
In the spirit of A Diary of a Nobody, this logbook of political and personal musings written by a 60-year old suburban businessman, offers a charming and colourful picture of life on the home front during the Second World War.
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