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The View From the Corner Shop: The Diary of a Yorkshire Shop Assistant in Wartime
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.
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.
352 pages, Paperback
Published April 21, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 39 reviews
March 21, 2025
Kathleen Hey lived and died in obscurity. She worked as a clerk in her brother-in-law's neighborhood shop; a clear case of underemployment. It's too bad, as she was an astute observer of human behavior, and an excellent writer. This young woman read everything she could get her hands on, from Dorothy L. Sayers to Herodotus. When she went on holiday, the best part, for her, was hunting for more books. When I think of all the women of her time and socioeconomic level who were denied opportunities for education and advancement, I think of all the the talent wasted, and in Kathleen's case, the books that were never written. Sadly, at the end of the diary, as the war ends, she is feeling discouraged and hopeless because she was afraid of poverty and hated the idea of being a burden to others. It makes me think of this by Thoreau:
"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation."
Needless to say this applies to women as well.
Kathleen passed away in Leeds in the 1980s, and I sincerely hope that she found happiness and fulfillment.
"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation."
Needless to say this applies to women as well.
Kathleen passed away in Leeds in the 1980s, and I sincerely hope that she found happiness and fulfillment.
September 10, 2025
I'm always getting new angles on WWII and this was eye-opening from the perspective of a 30-something single woman working with her family in a grocer's shop in a small Yorkshire town. Of course, grocers were on the front lines with rationing and it sounds like such a headache! So much bureaucracy. (I mean, how could it have been otherwise?) The rules around rationing frequently changed so it was tough for everyone to keep track and Kathleen and her family often had to help their customers make sense of what they could and couldn't have. Shortages also affected the stock in the store, so even if a certain food item was allowed for a period of time (like a shipment of oranges), Kathleen's store didn't always have it available from the suppliers. Tricky!
The town she lived in, Dewsbury, was only bombed once towards the very end of the war and very lightly so she and her family and neighbors talk about how they got off lightly, especially when new groups of evacuees would come from London. Kathleen had lots of say about the war news and the home front news with things like conscription for women, training for various things with the Women's Voluntary Service, etc. She loved to read so she'd often mention the book she was reading. I was impressed with the variety. She mentions Dorothy Sayers! She is not a religious person so I found her sense of pessimism sad, especially towards the end of the war as she looked ahead to what felt like a bleak future.
This would be good primary source material for a novelist. I'm rather a history aficionado so I enjoyed it on the whole. I'm not sure how generally interesting this would be, especially reading through the whole thing. I have enjoyed all the Mass-Observation content I've read thus far.
The town she lived in, Dewsbury, was only bombed once towards the very end of the war and very lightly so she and her family and neighbors talk about how they got off lightly, especially when new groups of evacuees would come from London. Kathleen had lots of say about the war news and the home front news with things like conscription for women, training for various things with the Women's Voluntary Service, etc. She loved to read so she'd often mention the book she was reading. I was impressed with the variety. She mentions Dorothy Sayers! She is not a religious person so I found her sense of pessimism sad, especially towards the end of the war as she looked ahead to what felt like a bleak future.
This would be good primary source material for a novelist. I'm rather a history aficionado so I enjoyed it on the whole. I'm not sure how generally interesting this would be, especially reading through the whole thing. I have enjoyed all the Mass-Observation content I've read thus far.
July 29, 2018
I found the first third of this book intensely irritating, because the editors were like helicopter parents: they couldn't leave well enough alone. In the Notes on editing in their introduction, they state
I cannot emphasise enough how intrusive and unnecessary the square brackets in particular were to the flow of reading this book. Despite having provided a list of Kathleen's most frequent acquaintances in the introduction, we are subjected to every single one of them in square brackets for at least the first two times they're mentioned, including their full name, relation, and geographical location. Hair-pullingly irritating.
The authors seemed to think that Kathleen's 'sometimes idiosyncratic grammar' needed translating into modern received English, even when it was clearly just a connecting word missed in writing or in a diarists' shorthand. For instance: 'Bert says [he] tried before at Wakefield but [it] didn't come off.' It ends up feeling more like a teacher's smug red-pen insertions than like the gentle, helpful editing they consider themselves doing.
Once they got over introducing every person, place, piece of war news, slightly obscure phrasing and other minutiae - say at the one third mark - this book became a lot more interesting. Kathleen, who had at first appeared quite staid and unsympathetic, began to be revealed as an intelligent and frustrated woman stuck in a restrictive, repetitive, closed-in life that was unlikely to change for the better.
Most interestingly, Kathleen clearly viewed her Mass Observation diary as a direct line to the Government, or at least someone in some kind of power. Particularly in the early years of the war she wrote vehemently 'about' her issues with rationing and the points system, the Food Office, wholesalers, big department stores, and delivery men. But it was obvious that she felt she was writing to someone, perhaps someone whom she felt, wishfully, could make a difference if only they knew the struggles of the small shopkeeper.
Frankly, it was when she gave up on this line of writing that her diary became more interesting. She mentioned at one point that she was writing two diaries, but it felt like perhaps she gave that up around 1943 and began using her MO diary for more than just recording her daily life as a shopkeeper.
Her observations of not only people around her, but her own feelings and thoughts about war and how she felt responsible as part of the society that had 'let it happen' were quite confronting. She was deeply resentful of having to live and work with her family members, finding the life increasingly small and enclosed. She grew more and more determined to try and experience a life of the mind, joining classes, musical appreciation societies, and attending the movies even though she hated nearly everything she saw (too many American films for her liking).
She felt that married women, particularly those without children, were treated too kindly by society and the government, and this is slowly revealed as, at least in part, bitterness and unhappiness at having been left a spinster by the first war. She was lonely, without much hope of respite, and a future which she insightfully perceived as more of the same - years more rationing and post-war slumps were both predictions she made years before the end of the war. Little wonder that sometime in 1945 she was bedridden with what we would today almost certainly call depression.
I'm glad I persevered with this book: I nearly gave up on it after catching on the hundredth unnecessary square bracket, but by the end the editors had managed to [mostly] forget that they really wanted to write a social history but instead did far too much research into the life of a diarist and then had to cram it all in somewhere.
"We have reproduced everything Kathleen wrote in her diary up to September 1944. Nothing has been omitted. Then, in the final chapter, covering October 1944 through August 1945, we present selections that highlight what we think are her most interesting observations from these last months of the war. We have also drawn on some of Kathleen's responses to Mass Observation's (usually) monthly questionnaires, known as Directives. Some of these passages are integrated into the text of her diary, others are placed in footnotes or paragraphs of editorial commentary.... We use square brackets occasionally to supply a missing word or a few pertinent facts, commonly of identification... Other than a few minor corrections, Kathleen's sometimes idiosyncratic grammar has not been altered." [Emphasis mine]
I cannot emphasise enough how intrusive and unnecessary the square brackets in particular were to the flow of reading this book. Despite having provided a list of Kathleen's most frequent acquaintances in the introduction, we are subjected to every single one of them in square brackets for at least the first two times they're mentioned, including their full name, relation, and geographical location. Hair-pullingly irritating.
The authors seemed to think that Kathleen's 'sometimes idiosyncratic grammar' needed translating into modern received English, even when it was clearly just a connecting word missed in writing or in a diarists' shorthand. For instance: 'Bert says [he] tried before at Wakefield but [it] didn't come off.' It ends up feeling more like a teacher's smug red-pen insertions than like the gentle, helpful editing they consider themselves doing.
Once they got over introducing every person, place, piece of war news, slightly obscure phrasing and other minutiae - say at the one third mark - this book became a lot more interesting. Kathleen, who had at first appeared quite staid and unsympathetic, began to be revealed as an intelligent and frustrated woman stuck in a restrictive, repetitive, closed-in life that was unlikely to change for the better.
Most interestingly, Kathleen clearly viewed her Mass Observation diary as a direct line to the Government, or at least someone in some kind of power. Particularly in the early years of the war she wrote vehemently 'about' her issues with rationing and the points system, the Food Office, wholesalers, big department stores, and delivery men. But it was obvious that she felt she was writing to someone, perhaps someone whom she felt, wishfully, could make a difference if only they knew the struggles of the small shopkeeper.
Frankly, it was when she gave up on this line of writing that her diary became more interesting. She mentioned at one point that she was writing two diaries, but it felt like perhaps she gave that up around 1943 and began using her MO diary for more than just recording her daily life as a shopkeeper.
Her observations of not only people around her, but her own feelings and thoughts about war and how she felt responsible as part of the society that had 'let it happen' were quite confronting. She was deeply resentful of having to live and work with her family members, finding the life increasingly small and enclosed. She grew more and more determined to try and experience a life of the mind, joining classes, musical appreciation societies, and attending the movies even though she hated nearly everything she saw (too many American films for her liking).
She felt that married women, particularly those without children, were treated too kindly by society and the government, and this is slowly revealed as, at least in part, bitterness and unhappiness at having been left a spinster by the first war. She was lonely, without much hope of respite, and a future which she insightfully perceived as more of the same - years more rationing and post-war slumps were both predictions she made years before the end of the war. Little wonder that sometime in 1945 she was bedridden with what we would today almost certainly call depression.
I'm glad I persevered with this book: I nearly gave up on it after catching on the hundredth unnecessary square bracket, but by the end the editors had managed to [mostly] forget that they really wanted to write a social history but instead did far too much research into the life of a diarist and then had to cram it all in somewhere.
August 13, 2017
It was interesting to contrast this diary with the more famous Nella Last's War: The Second World War Diaries of Housewife, 49 which I have read several times. Though they both lived in the north of England, their situations were very different. Kathleen Hey had no family members in the armed forces; therefore she is more of an observer than a direct participant. A relatively young single woman, she doesn't seem to have much of a social life; no "young man", no dates, and no apparent interest in socialising. This may have been due to simple physical weariness caused by being on her feet all day in the shop, though one would think a young woman would want to get out of the shop/house and feel free.
I wonder what Nella Last would have thought of Hey's opinion of Barrow-in-Furness, which was apparently hit much harder than Dewsbury Moore where Hey lived. Kathleen calls Barrow a "depressing, grey hole" and probably would have echoed Bette Davis: "What a dump!", if she hadn't been so anti-American. Not only anti-the-American-soldier, but anti-US in general. No time for even American films has our Kathleen! She was much more pro-Russia, expressing her admiration for their ability to "get on with the job" over and over. She also says that people in the north were much further away from direct attacks than further south, though perhaps the shipyards made Barrow an exception.
It was interesting to read of the dreadful mismanagement of wartime rationing from an "insider's" point of view. Though Hey apparently did no cooking (or housework, that I can see) and making do and mending didn't form part of her job description (no knitting for the troops, making up parcels etc) she did have to deal with the contradictory and often fantasist rationing directives handed down by a government she found increasingly out of touch with reality as lived by those in lower income brackets than, say, members of Parliament.
I wonder why the editors chose to skip over quite so much of her diary, leaving in only those passages to do with rationing, when Nella is given--how many volumes is it now? We'll never know what was "edited" out; it might have made Hey appear more rounded and human.
I wonder what Nella Last would have thought of Hey's opinion of Barrow-in-Furness, which was apparently hit much harder than Dewsbury Moore where Hey lived. Kathleen calls Barrow a "depressing, grey hole" and probably would have echoed Bette Davis: "What a dump!", if she hadn't been so anti-American. Not only anti-the-American-soldier, but anti-US in general. No time for even American films has our Kathleen! She was much more pro-Russia, expressing her admiration for their ability to "get on with the job" over and over. She also says that people in the north were much further away from direct attacks than further south, though perhaps the shipyards made Barrow an exception.
It was interesting to read of the dreadful mismanagement of wartime rationing from an "insider's" point of view. Though Hey apparently did no cooking (or housework, that I can see) and making do and mending didn't form part of her job description (no knitting for the troops, making up parcels etc) she did have to deal with the contradictory and often fantasist rationing directives handed down by a government she found increasingly out of touch with reality as lived by those in lower income brackets than, say, members of Parliament.
I wonder why the editors chose to skip over quite so much of her diary, leaving in only those passages to do with rationing, when Nella is given--how many volumes is it now? We'll never know what was "edited" out; it might have made Hey appear more rounded and human.
September 1, 2016
If the diary extracts chosen here are the best then it must indeed have been a dreary task for the editors to plough through 6 years or so of these entries.
The writer is part of a family of grocers running a shop in Dewsbury, Yorkshire. None of their family or friends appear to have been fighting in WWII and they do not seem to suffer any real hardship during the war years. This is admitted by Kathleen Hey herself several times over the course of her diary.
The main preoccupation is food rationing and getting food supplies to sell in their shop. The trouble with this is that after a while it becomes boring and repetitive. The writer did very little travelling and so the whole book is very parochial. With a gifted diarist the daily minutiae can be absorbing but this lady does not possess this talent. Her writing is very self-conscious and mundane. I have read many diaries from this period collected by the Mass Observation project and this is not one I would have bothered to publish.
The writer is part of a family of grocers running a shop in Dewsbury, Yorkshire. None of their family or friends appear to have been fighting in WWII and they do not seem to suffer any real hardship during the war years. This is admitted by Kathleen Hey herself several times over the course of her diary.
The main preoccupation is food rationing and getting food supplies to sell in their shop. The trouble with this is that after a while it becomes boring and repetitive. The writer did very little travelling and so the whole book is very parochial. With a gifted diarist the daily minutiae can be absorbing but this lady does not possess this talent. Her writing is very self-conscious and mundane. I have read many diaries from this period collected by the Mass Observation project and this is not one I would have bothered to publish.
June 26, 2016
A very interesting diary documenting the change in food provision, families, feelings and emotions in a Yorkshire community through the War. Although quite sympathetic the shopkeeper never really had the issues herself as she often went out for trips and bought treats and could have items from the shop that were much sought after. It was a complete surprise to read of her days out in my home town and the town next to me and I enjoyed reading her descriptions.A very enjoyable read.
August 26, 2025
First what I liked. I liked the firsthand knowledge/account of living in England during the war and the hardships, shortages, and the ups and downs. I learned a lot through her writings.
What I didn’t like. She became more and more cynical, complainy and judgemental as time went on. It seemed to infect her. It then became a bit of a slog to read and I decided to skim the last 1/3.
What I didn’t like. She became more and more cynical, complainy and judgemental as time went on. It seemed to infect her. It then became a bit of a slog to read and I decided to skim the last 1/3.
June 23, 2017
It seems quite unfair to review a diary when it was not written with publishing in mind. However, I will say it is an easy read and very interesting. I think I learnt a lot more about the attitudes of people during this era than from reading fiction based at this time. Quite scarily I noticed that in many instances attitudes have not changed as much as I had hoped over the years. A very worthwhile read, I would happily recommend to other readers interested in this era.
June 23, 2020
Has over 300 pages not 259
A
A
June 7, 2019
I bought this book primarily for the sake of the daily life details it promised, and of those I got plenty -- no-one is better placed to show you what rationing was all about than a wartime grocer; but what made it memorable was the writer's personality: a clever, well-read woman with a sharp critical mind, who wishes to learn (she takes up Esperanto at some point) and experience beautiful things (she goes to every classical music concert and play in town) and make something of her life, but is stuck in an unrewarding job, in a dreary place, cooped up in cramped living quarters with relations who can't help but get on each other's nerves -- all this on top of a war going on. Unfortunately, the editors of the diary were unable to discover anything about Kathleen's postwar life except the time and place of her death, and we don't know whether she got her own little place in the end.
May 21, 2020
2020 bk 169. Another compilation of the MASS OBSERVATION project in England. The authors do describe the efforts to learn more about Kathleen Hey, but sadly only have census and an obituary. Kathleen Hey was 35 at the start of the war, single, and worked/lived with her brother, his wife, and their mother in Yorkshire. Theirs was an industrial village close to Leeds and luckily escaped most of the bombing raids. They did experience evacuees coming to the village. Of particular note, as the village shop keepers they had to deal with rationing / food rules from the consumer and the merchant points of view and many were the battles with the food boards. Boredom from lack of travel or new experiences plagued our diarist. She yearned for high standards in entertainment and read quite a number of what would now be classified as "cerebral' books. A rare event was a classical music evening. Her brother had control of the one radio in the home and with the four people having very different interests Kathleen had to look to her WVS work, firewatching, and the library (I'm assuming in Leeds). A good look at life in Yorkshire, England during WWII
April 26, 2017
Kathleen had really quite an easy war.
Tucked far enough away that only one bomb appears to have landed anywhere near, her biggest hardship was dealing with rationing from a shopkeeper perspective.
Either that, or she purposely left a lot of stuff out of her Mass Observation Diary!
Quite a slow read, almost crushingly boring in places.
Worth the read mostly if you are interested in the history of rationing - this viewpoint might be quite different to some of the "official" information - it all seemed quite haphazard!
Tucked far enough away that only one bomb appears to have landed anywhere near, her biggest hardship was dealing with rationing from a shopkeeper perspective.
Either that, or she purposely left a lot of stuff out of her Mass Observation Diary!
Quite a slow read, almost crushingly boring in places.
Worth the read mostly if you are interested in the history of rationing - this viewpoint might be quite different to some of the "official" information - it all seemed quite haphazard!
September 15, 2019
I like the topic, but this one bogged down in my opinion. I really wanted to learn about rationing points and learning from a shop person is great BUT it became very boring. Maybe it was the way she wrote it??? I read 2/3 and gave up. I will most likely get that last part finished one day. Maybe with a more mature brain, I could understand it and enjoy it more??? What a sad housewife I'd be in WW2 if I couldn't understand the food ration point system properly!!! (I read a paperback).
October 17, 2017
The diary entries grew tiresome after a little while.
There is little that changes and with a limited view of the world and the war, Kathleen actually has very little to say. The diary ultimately becomes repetitive and petty.
There is little that changes and with a limited view of the world and the war, Kathleen actually has very little to say. The diary ultimately becomes repetitive and petty.
August 5, 2017
Bored me, could not wait for the book to end....seemed to just be repeating the same thing over and over again with a few interesting bits here and there.
December 8, 2025
During 39 to 46 Diaries of days and events written by the general public in all walks of life were submitted.
A huge thank you to those who did, so we can hear their thoughts now so many years on!
What we take from this is....each and every one of us should really reflect on life and what we have and how we've progressed.
There was no NHS, and several times she refers to a class system and she was not treated properly or received proper treatment when unwell due to being of standard working class. Let's protect our NHS!
They didn't have the state pension and even though it was being fazed in they were worried if they'd work till 65. It's only going to get longer now. Possibly 70+ for me!
There was more community then! It had its issues and wasn't all Rosie, but I do think we are moving into a different age now what with the internet and people not knowing anyone in their own streets.... I'd like to think we can still support each other in the community, but it needs work or at least encouragement.
I was surprised to read about the superstition beliefs and how often they got futures read and more beliefs in astrology. I remember in my own childhood, Russell Grant and Mystic Meg, but nowadays it's blended into the background.
Food rationing and money shortages. I think people wouldn't cope now in the same circumstances!
I could go on, but it's truly becoming a past different era but we could and should learn many lessons from it.
A huge thank you to those who did, so we can hear their thoughts now so many years on!
What we take from this is....each and every one of us should really reflect on life and what we have and how we've progressed.
There was no NHS, and several times she refers to a class system and she was not treated properly or received proper treatment when unwell due to being of standard working class. Let's protect our NHS!
They didn't have the state pension and even though it was being fazed in they were worried if they'd work till 65. It's only going to get longer now. Possibly 70+ for me!
There was more community then! It had its issues and wasn't all Rosie, but I do think we are moving into a different age now what with the internet and people not knowing anyone in their own streets.... I'd like to think we can still support each other in the community, but it needs work or at least encouragement.
I was surprised to read about the superstition beliefs and how often they got futures read and more beliefs in astrology. I remember in my own childhood, Russell Grant and Mystic Meg, but nowadays it's blended into the background.
Food rationing and money shortages. I think people wouldn't cope now in the same circumstances!
I could go on, but it's truly becoming a past different era but we could and should learn many lessons from it.
November 20, 2020
In 1938 an organisation was formed to obtain the views of the ordinary person in the street. Some were asked to keep a diary of their day to day lives and in recent years some of these have been published. This is one such kept by Kathleen Hey, an assistant in her brother-in-law's corner shop in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire. It covers the 5 years between July 1941 and July 1946. It records the day to day life in a small part of the UK which was relatively untouched by the war, in that there was little or no bombing. What I found particularly interesting was the views and attitudes about the war and it's conduct. There is little feeling that the country was conducting a just war, time and again the comment being made that it was over t'brass and when t'brass ran out the war would end. There are constant complaints about the operation of the rationing system, the endless circulars about that which were sent out in difficult to understand jargon and about the optimistic reports on the radio about the availability of certain foodstuffs which weren't apparent to those selling the same. Chain stores such as Woolworths and M&S come in for criticism for buying up quantities of staples when they had not been in the market pre war. What comes across to me is that the myth of all pulling together in the face of adversity is just that, a myth.
July 10, 2019
If you want to understand what the British homefront during WWII was like, hunt down any of the collections from the Mass Observation. This program enlisted volunteer journal-writers to record their every-day activities.
I always wonder what my friends and neighbors (and I myself) would say and do today if our supplies coffee and chocolate and fuel and new clothes and lodging were suddenly extremely limited. (Can you imagine how the internet trolls would howl?)
When I read comments about how "boring" these accounts are, I wonder whether the reviewer read enough to recognize that they were written in a time when no one could take for granted that "we" would win the Second World War. The Mass Observation accounts invite us to experience those hardships and that insecurity just as it was experienced. (Would we be stoic or very very disconcerted? Would our fears be "boring"?)
"View from the Corner Shop" is shorter than the other Mass Observation collections I have read, but like them is tremendously valuable for its warmth and vividness and truth.
I always wonder what my friends and neighbors (and I myself) would say and do today if our supplies coffee and chocolate and fuel and new clothes and lodging were suddenly extremely limited. (Can you imagine how the internet trolls would howl?)
When I read comments about how "boring" these accounts are, I wonder whether the reviewer read enough to recognize that they were written in a time when no one could take for granted that "we" would win the Second World War. The Mass Observation accounts invite us to experience those hardships and that insecurity just as it was experienced. (Would we be stoic or very very disconcerted? Would our fears be "boring"?)
"View from the Corner Shop" is shorter than the other Mass Observation collections I have read, but like them is tremendously valuable for its warmth and vividness and truth.
July 6, 2019
This was one of the first books I have read about civilian life through the 2nd world war that was a viewpoint of a person that had ‘no skin in the game’ so to speak. Focussed on food shortages and people just trying to get on. It shows a completely different perspective that you see from those in the more southerly regions of England. Very interesting and mentioned a few things that I had never realised such as Churchill being less than sober when giving some speeches. The general comments from people coming into the shop are almost exactly the same as we are uttering through out this Brexit debacle. Definitely worth a read and so can recommend to the normal crew.
December 26, 2023
I admit that part of my problem with this book us that I thought it was historical fiction, not non-fiction. If you are not British a lot of this book is hard to follow. The constant mention of prices got confusing and boring. Working in a shop, Kathleen necessarily spent a lot of her time on food, rationing, points, etc. While it might be important historically it does not make for interesting reading
December 5, 2025
A bit mundane but interesting to read. What I found interesting is when the diarist records some of her customer's complaints about the war are the same complaints people make of just about every other war. Such as it was instigated by and benefiting the well off, i. e. the rich. Some complain about how it's the fault of the Jews as well. Such nonsense.
February 22, 2017
I really enjoyed this and was sorry when i finished it. I would have liked to have read more, but don't know if the author wrote past the period the book ends at.
It's interesting to read about the impact of the War through the eyes of a civilian.
It's interesting to read about the impact of the War through the eyes of a civilian.
June 15, 2017
A fascinating diary of the second world war through the eyes of a shop assistant. I found this to be a compelling read, with an interesting view of rationing and the impact of the war on the civilians in this area of Dewsbury.
July 4, 2017
Part of the Mass Observation diaries kept by 'ordinary' people during WW2, this volume takes us through the war years as seen by a grocery shop assistant in an industrial Yorkshire town - very down to earth and a realistic picture of the day-to-day existence of many people during that time.
April 6, 2018
I loved this book
My dad's family came from the area so it brought back memories
Dad and his brothers were in the army and air force during the time
His sister's and mum will have been doing in the area.
It was interesting to read how life was at that time
Really enjoyed it.
My dad's family came from the area so it brought back memories
Dad and his brothers were in the army and air force during the time
His sister's and mum will have been doing in the area.
It was interesting to read how life was at that time
Really enjoyed it.
August 29, 2019
A very revealing book about life at home in wartime.
Once again I am being bullied into writing a short essay as the price of escaping from Goodreads. The book is fine and I can recommend it, but I cannot recommend Goodreads.
Once again I am being bullied into writing a short essay as the price of escaping from Goodreads. The book is fine and I can recommend it, but I cannot recommend Goodreads.
June 7, 2020
I loved this book. If you are into WW2 homefront history, this is a must read. If WW2 homefront history isn't a passion for you, I think you'd be bored. But it's very interesting to me, so I learned so much. I have the same semi-grumpy attitude as Kathleen so we would have definitely been friends.
October 15, 2023
I love diaries and this one was most interesting.
I see nothing has changed in all the years since this was written. Government still make unpracticable rules, everyone moans about them, everyone tries to fiddle them.
I see nothing has changed in all the years since this was written. Government still make unpracticable rules, everyone moans about them, everyone tries to fiddle them.
October 26, 2018
This is an interesting glimpse into the lives of "ordinary People" who lived through WWII in England.
I had never heard of the Mass Observation and those diaries and was fascinated.
I had never heard of the Mass Observation and those diaries and was fascinated.
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