The View From the Corner Shop: The Diary of a Yorkshire Shop Assistant in Wartime - Couverture souple

Hey, Kathleen; Malcolmson, Patricia

 
9781471154010: The View From the Corner Shop: The Diary of a Yorkshire Shop Assistant in Wartime
Couverture souple
ISBN 10 : 1471154017 ISBN 13 : 9781471154010
Editeur : Simon & Schuster Ltd, 2016

Synopsis

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.

Les informations fournies dans la section « Synopsis » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.

À propos de l?auteur

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.

Les informations fournies dans la section « A propos du livre » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.

Éditeur
Simon & Schuster Ltd
Date d'édition
2016
Langue
anglais
ISBN 10 
1471154017
ISBN 13 
9781471154010
Reliure
Broché
Nombre de pages
352
Éditeur
Malcolmson Robert
Coordonnées du fabricant
non disponible
Personne responsable
non disponible