A 1940s Childhood: From Bomb Sites to Children's Hour

Decades of Childhood

by James Marsh

Do you remember collecting shrapnel and listening to Children's Hour? Carrying gas masks or sharing your school with evacuees from the city? The 1940s was a decade of great challenge for everyone who lived through it. The hardships and fear created by a world war were immense. Britain's towns and cities were being bombed on an almost nightly basis, and many children faced the trauma of being parted from their parents and sent away to the country to live with complete strangers. For just over half of this decade the war continued, meaning food and clothing shortages became a way of life. But through it all, and afterwards, the simplicity of kids shone. From collecting bits of shot-down German aircraft to playing in bomb-strewn streets, kids made their own fun. Then there was the joy of the second half of the 1940s, when fathers came home and the magic of 'normal life' returned.

This trip down memory lane will take you through the most memorable and evocative experiences of growing up in the 1940s.

Genres: Nonfiction, War, History

210 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 1, 2014

About the author

There is more than one author with this name

James Marsh is a member of Writing Buddies, The Vindicatrix Association, and a small group of writers who meet in Southampton, and is the author of A 1950s Southampton Childhood, Davie Collins and the Sundance Gang, Growing Up in Wartime Southampton, and Vindi Boys Forever. --This text refers to the paperback edition.

Reviews

[Novelle Novels · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 out of 5 stars
I won’t write a long review as it is what the title says. Childhood in the 1940’s was tough but this book shows how children made the best out of it. The way the author has strung the chapters together flowed really well and it didn’t jump around. Pictures woven in the mix of the words made it feel so alive. Yes this was a tough era but people got through it with a resilience that those of us today could do with. Too often we moan about things that in those days would have appeared like nothing.

[Rue Baldry · Rating 2 out of 5]

It has taken me a ridiculously long time to read this tiny book because it is written in such an annoying way. I’m not sure who it is aimed at. I can’t see children taking to it, partly because it is written as though children are idiots. It’s also full of off-putting sexism and jingoism, which are doubtless there to show how people thought at the time, but feel too much even for then. The writer may claim he was mocking the attitudes of ‘40s boys to ‘40s girls, but the ending shows that the jingoism remains the writer’s own.

If a reader knew nothing about the ‘40s before reading this, they would learn a lot (though much of the information is then repeated several times). However, watching a couple of films set on the Second World War home front would give you most of it, and some of what is described was still true in the ‘80s, and even 90s, so you’d have to be a fair bit younger than me to be enlightened by those things.

The proof reading is pretty poor, too. The worst thing is the way the tenses jump all over the place, sometimes in the same sentence. There are also statements which make no point, missing capital letters, typos and parody level uses of the phrases “what a swizz”, “at least that’s what our teachers tell us,” “we think it is super”, “we don’t mind a bit” and “our mums say”. Part of the problem is that the writer is trying to present a single narrator representing all British 1940s children, while including information about a great variety of experiences, and also technical, military and political information which doesn’t fit that narrator (hence all the “well, that’s what our teachers say, but we don’t really understand it” phrases).

This could have been a great little memoir but the way it has been written feels awkward and dishonest.

[Lisa Shardlow · Rating 5 out of 5]

I know this is called A 1940's Childhood, but I wasn’t expecting it to be told from the perspective of a child. The author tells us all about the things that children, including himself, got up to during the 1940's but as though he is a child and he is living through these experiences right now. I really liked that about the book and it was interesting too. It was full of things I’d never thought about before.

[Jim Kernott · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really nice read, giving insight into how children saw such a terrible time. They made games, using their imagination and really made the best of a worst situation! I’d recommend, a child’s lighthearted way of looking at a time experienced by so many!

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Evocative Nostalgic

James Marsh takes the reader on a journey through the eyes of his childhood war years. A nostalgic evocative account of a Britain long gone.

[João · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first part of the book and really good. I would like to see more of the description of their lives during the war. It was really interesting. The rest was good, but just not as good.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good book if you want to know what life was like in the 1940s.

[Tracey Terrington · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lot of what happened in the decade of the 1940s still applied to us in the 1970s. Couldn't imagine living through the war years though. How the British suffered with rationing.

[Sharon Dorricott · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting