Love is Blue: A Wartime Diary

Wartime Diaries #2

by Joan Wyndham

In this sequel to "Love Lessons", in which the author recounted her coming-of-age in bohemian Chelsea during the early years of the war, she continues her education in love and life through the war years, in the blue serge uniform of a WAAF. Joan Wyndham is 19 in April 1941, when she and her three close friends, Oscar, Gussy and Pandora, are posted to a bleak, forbidding billet outside Preston. Promotion rescues her from the horrors of bed bugs, bullying and constant hunger, and transfers her to a paradise of chintz sofas, log fires, and abundant booze. On leave in London, she meets a Yugoslav painter and Zoltan, a poseur with whom she falls painfully in love. Posted to Inverness, she embarks on a new round of romantic adventures - with a Scottish aristocrat, a Norwegian sailor and, later, a young battle-scarred fighter pilot. As five years in uniform come to an end, she has to make a choice between Oxford and the glorious prospect of an unregimented life.

Genres: Memoir, World War II, Diary, Nonfiction, Historical, British Literature, Biography

208 pages, Paperback

First published September 8, 1986

About the author

Joan Olivia Wyndham was a British writer and memoirist who rose to literary prominence late in life through the diaries she had kept more than 40 years earlier, which were an account of her romantic adventures during the Second World War, when she was an attractive teenager who had strayed into London's Bohemian set. Her literary reputation rests on Love Lessons (1985) and Love Is Blue (1986), two selections from her diaries which led one critic to call her “a latterday Pepys in camiknickers”.

Reviews

[Nigeyb · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed the first volume of Joan Wyndham's teenage diaries Love Lessons (1985). Joan Wyndham was not a typical teenager and Love Lessons is not a typical WW2 Blitz memoir. Joan came from a wealthy background and gravitated towards bohemian circles.

Needless to say I was keen to continue Joan's story which is all contained in this, volume 2, Love is Blue: A Wartime Diary (1986). In April 1941, when these diaries start, Joan is 19 and is posted to Preston to begin her time as a WAAF.

It's hard to imagine many people had such an event-strewn and enjoyable WW2 as Joan who, it is fair to say, threw herself into life, as well as working hard for the war effort. Her adventures are a blast, yet again.

I'll probably press straight on with the third and final volume Anything Once (1992)

4/5




In this sequel to Love Lessons, in which the author recounted her coming-of-age in bohemian Chelsea during the early years of the war, she continues her education in love and life through the war years, in the blue serge uniform of a WAAF. Joan Wyndham is 19 in April 1941, when she and her three close friends, Oscar, Gussy and Pandora, are posted to a bleak, forbidding billet outside Preston. Promotion rescues her from the horrors of bed bugs, bullying and constant hunger, and transfers her to a paradise of chintz sofas, log fires, and abundant booze. On leave in London, she meets a Yugoslav painter and Zoltan, a poseur with whom she falls painfully in love. Posted to Inverness, she embarks on a new round of romantic adventures - with a Scottish aristocrat, a Norwegian sailor and, later, a young battle-scarred fighter pilot. As five years in uniform come to an end, she has to make a choice between Oxford and the glorious prospect of an unregimented life.

[Pamela Shropshire · Rating 4 out of 5]

Joan Wyndham was 19 when, in 1941, she finished her training and was posted to Preston as a plotter. We’ve all seen WW2 movies showing huge map tables, with both men and women in uniform moving arrows and other symbols around on the map - this is how Joan and her friends/colleagues spent their working hours for 4 years.

In their non-working hours — well, that’s quite a different story — a story of heavy drinking, mild drug use (Benzadrine) and sex. I’m curious as to how much Ms. Wyndham edited her actual diaries, because the published book (1986) is extremely frank and open about her sex life, during a time when nice girls didn’t do that kind of thing.

She was also quite self aware as evidenced in these passages written at the end of the war:

Monday, 6th August [1945]
She went on to tell us that it was called an atomic bomb and the whole of Hiroshima had been wiped out and the Japs would certainly sue for peace within the next few days.

I think I was stunned, not so much because of the bomb as at the thought of the war ending. Later, when the meaning finally sank in, I felt the strangest mixture of elation and terror. It was as if my whole world had suddenly come to an end. Five years of security and happy comradeship, the feeling of being needed – and ahead a kind of uncharted wilderness, lonely and frightening.

At the same time there was a small but undeniable feeling of excitement, like the end of school term, the hols looming ahead. I was vividly aware of everything about me, the dusty golden ragwort, the blue sky, even the knots in the wooden gate under my hand.
*****
Sunday, 16th September
I thought about this [getting married], and then I thought of all the things I wanted to do, the strange and beautiful places I’ve never seen, music I’ve never heard, books I’ve never read, new friends, new loves – and of how short life is. It was like a meal at the Shanghai – the awful anxiety is seeing so many delicious things cooling in front of mine. Would there be the time, the appetite, the opportunity to taste them all?

I really don’t know where to start but I know that I want everything and I want it now, with such an acute and all-consuming appetite that it gives me a dry mouth, a tingling tongue and a pain in the side of my head.

Sunday, 23rd September
Five years of regimentation – not to mention those ten years at the convent – have left me with a lust for liberty that has to be satisfied, and all I really want now with all my heart is to be let off the leash – to be gloriously, totally and dangerously free.

It’s a very quick read, and a very enjoyable one. I have ordered the preceding volume called Love Lessons; I found my copy of Love is Blue in Lloyd’s of Kew Bookshop on a very warm day in June, 2017. We had spent the day at Kew Gardens; it was much cooler outdoor in the shade than inside any non-air conditioned building.

4.5 stars.

[Clare Harvey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reads a bit like a WW2 blog. It doesn't feel as honest as Love Lessons, so I was tempted to give just three stars, but I still pretty much devoured it in one sitting, so I'll stick with four.

[Stuart · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Frankly, I'd rather be in a hot bath sucking boiled sweets and reading Agatha Christie..." Dylan Thomas to Joan Wyndham

[Nicola Pierce · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read it in three sittings but, if I'm being honest, it felt a little forced and I did get bored. I absolutely loved 'Love Lessons' and expected to feel the same way about this but I didn't. I wanted to hear so much more about the work she was doing, the books she was reading and more about her parents too. I got bored of the constantly chasing men I wouldn't touch with a barge pole. And it did feel heavily edited as the gaps between entries were usually big. What was left out? Was she told to just submit stuff to do with her love life? I constantly wondered about the ordinary days when she wasn't falling in love or having sex. This is why I got bored, I think, because there wasn't enough variety in the book.

[Stacy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this better than her first diary. There was more information about life during the war and a little less about her love life.

[Quietly Bookish · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely adored "A Very British Romance", a mini-series presented by the fabulous Lucy Worsely about how the British have made love through the ages. In the series she mentions various works of fiction and non-fiction that she believes depict well the way in which love was viewed and acted out by the British in various times in history. Immediately, I embarked on a mission - to read all the books she mentions. Joan Wyndham's diaries were mentioned during the episode that included WW2. This one is from the latter half of the war, and it is absolutely marvelous. It gives the reader a glimpse not only into the experiences of a young woman during a terrible time in history not so long ago, but also into how a certain class of people lived, behaved and acted at the time (Joan is not a working-class girl, oh no). It is a great book for those interested in history and that particular period, but it is also a rather remarkable piece of writing. She has a real talent with words, descriptions and observations. Although it is a diary, and therefore necessarily centered on her, it is unexpectedly objective and humorous, especially for someone who was in her (very) early twenties.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much more than "one girl's war diary". Surprisingly racy, honest and self-aware, as well as giving the reader a marvelous insight into the world of women in the early 1940s