Ebook: The domestic soldiers

Over 8 million women stayed at home during the Second World War and their story has never been told. Using brand new research from the Mass-Observation Archive, Jennifer Purcell brings to life - in all its tragedy, pathos, joy and fear - the lives of six ordinary women made extraordinary by the demands of war. In their diaries and notes they record the inner thoughts and everyday activities as they tried to survive come what may. Nella Last, the archetypal housewife struggles between the demands of her husband and her desire to help the war effort. Cambridge-educated, middle-class Natalie Tanner sneaks out to the cinema whenever possible and discusses politics in town, leading a leisured life while others try to scrape by. Saddled with a draughty and unwieldy centuries-old home directly in the path of German bombs, Helen Mitchell constantly tries to escape the war and her domestic life. Opinionated and patriotic Edie Rutherford uses the war to escape the home and go to work....