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Where Stands a Wingèd Sentry
Most people knew in their hearts that the lid had been taken off hell, and that what had been done in Guernica would one day be done in London, Paris and Berlin.’
Margaret Kennedy’s prophetic words, written about the pre-war mood in Europe, give the tone of this riveting 1941 wartime memoir: it is Mrs Miniver with the gloves off. Her account, taken from her war diaries, conveys the tension, frustration and bewilderment of the progression of the war, and the terror of knowing that the worst is to come, but not yet knowing what the worst will be.
English bravery, confusion, stubbornness and dark humour (‘Nanny says that an Abbess is threatening to swallow the whole of Europe’) provide the positive, more hopeful side of Kennedy’s experiences, in which she and her children move from Surrey to Cornwall, to sit out the war amidst a quietly efficient Home Guard and the most scandalous rumours. Where Stands A Wingèd Sentry (the title comes from a 17th-century poem by Henry Vaughan) was only published in the USA, and has never been published in the UK before.
The Introduction will be by Faye Hammill, Professor of English at the University of Glasgow.
Margaret Kennedy’s prophetic words, written about the pre-war mood in Europe, give the tone of this riveting 1941 wartime memoir: it is Mrs Miniver with the gloves off. Her account, taken from her war diaries, conveys the tension, frustration and bewilderment of the progression of the war, and the terror of knowing that the worst is to come, but not yet knowing what the worst will be.
English bravery, confusion, stubbornness and dark humour (‘Nanny says that an Abbess is threatening to swallow the whole of Europe’) provide the positive, more hopeful side of Kennedy’s experiences, in which she and her children move from Surrey to Cornwall, to sit out the war amidst a quietly efficient Home Guard and the most scandalous rumours. Where Stands A Wingèd Sentry (the title comes from a 17th-century poem by Henry Vaughan) was only published in the USA, and has never been published in the UK before.
The Introduction will be by Faye Hammill, Professor of English at the University of Glasgow.
280 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1941
About the author
Margaret Kennedy
47 books93 followersMargaret Kennedy was an English novelist and playwright.
She attended Cheltenham Ladies' College, where she began writing, and then went up to Somerville College, Oxford in 1915 to read history. Her first publication was a history book, A Century of Revolution (1922). Margaret Kennedy was married to the barrister David Davies. They had a son and two daughters, one of whom was the novelist Julia Birley. The novelist Serena Mackesy is her grand-daughter.
She attended Cheltenham Ladies' College, where she began writing, and then went up to Somerville College, Oxford in 1915 to read history. Her first publication was a history book, A Century of Revolution (1922). Margaret Kennedy was married to the barrister David Davies. They had a son and two daughters, one of whom was the novelist Julia Birley. The novelist Serena Mackesy is her grand-daughter.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
January 30, 2022
A brilliant and quite extraordinary memoir of the early part of the war by Margaret Kennedy. She wrote this account based on her diaries, which she had sent to America for safe-keeping; she was aware that she was living through history and wanted her account kept for posterity. It's an interesting time period; the French lines had largely collapsed, the Nazi's were marching on, and all of a sudden, the faith that the British and her allies would would defeat the Nazi's began to waiver. The threat of invasion became very real. There is a lot of awareness of the enormity of the threat to the world posed by Nazism (not always the case in contempory dairies), and the weight upon British shoulders as they were finding their allies falling, "The nations of the world may not altogether like the British Empire, but in resisting Nazi tyranny we are truly representing the will of the whole civilised world.". She doesn't doubt that all right thinking people, including Germans will want to end Hitler's reign, and an awful lot is riding on our nation at this point. This is her reaction on seeing a RAF pilot walking through the town; "For there is only such a handful of them compared to the Luftwaffe, and they have so few machines. But that handful stands in the pass, and all our hopes, the hopes of free men all over the world, hang on them. if they failed us night would fall."
She is also a mother; she took her three children and a friend's daughter from their home in Suffolk down to Cornwall, feeling Suffolk would become very dangerous once the invasion began, and there is often little doubt that it would begin. She is torn as a mother as to what to do for the best for her children; should she try to send them to America with the potential danger of the crossing? She doesn't want her children to go at the expense of others and if the children of poorer families aren't given the same opportunities, is it right for hers to go? This uncertainty of what is about to happen, and what they might have to face together comes through loud and clear. At the same time, while she is nearly always feeling worried and uncertain what the future will bring, and rage at the enemy. The book is also really funny in places; there are some laugh out loud descriptions of the residents in Porthmerryn, their reactions to the "vackies", their attitude to authority, and their ways of dealing with things. Also the "Glue bottoms", "The expensive hotels are filling up with expensive ecvauees. We call them the Gluebottoms because they seem able to do nothing but sit", complaining that there is nothing to do here, "Meanwhile the residents are looking after 800 Vackies, haymaking, training for the home guard, fire fighting, and ARP, and digging for victory."
There is plenty written about the blitz, but not so much about the 'phony war', (the bit before the Blitz started where nothing much had happened but threats). This was a really interesting perspective of it and I'm sure It'll become a favourite to re-read.
She is also a mother; she took her three children and a friend's daughter from their home in Suffolk down to Cornwall, feeling Suffolk would become very dangerous once the invasion began, and there is often little doubt that it would begin. She is torn as a mother as to what to do for the best for her children; should she try to send them to America with the potential danger of the crossing? She doesn't want her children to go at the expense of others and if the children of poorer families aren't given the same opportunities, is it right for hers to go? This uncertainty of what is about to happen, and what they might have to face together comes through loud and clear. At the same time, while she is nearly always feeling worried and uncertain what the future will bring, and rage at the enemy. The book is also really funny in places; there are some laugh out loud descriptions of the residents in Porthmerryn, their reactions to the "vackies", their attitude to authority, and their ways of dealing with things. Also the "Glue bottoms", "The expensive hotels are filling up with expensive ecvauees. We call them the Gluebottoms because they seem able to do nothing but sit", complaining that there is nothing to do here, "Meanwhile the residents are looking after 800 Vackies, haymaking, training for the home guard, fire fighting, and ARP, and digging for victory."
There is plenty written about the blitz, but not so much about the 'phony war', (the bit before the Blitz started where nothing much had happened but threats). This was a really interesting perspective of it and I'm sure It'll become a favourite to re-read.
March 18, 2021
In her introduction to the book, Faye Hammill, Professor of English at the University of Glasgow, describes Where Stands A Wingèd Sentry as an extraordinary record of the terrifying months from May to September 1940 when fears of invasion were rife. Originally published in the US in 1941 by Yale University Press, it has never until now been published in the UK.
Where Stands A Wingèd Sentry is Margaret Kennedy’s own day by day account of what she herself describes as her ‘inner battle’, involving everything from resolving everyday domestic challenges to difficult decisions about the safety of her family. Although written with one eye on posterity, Margaret’s journal also seems to have been a sounding board for her concerns and worries. Frequently she lists the pro’s and con’s of things such as asking the doctor for sedatives to help her sleep, or the morality of taking advantage of evacuating her children to Canada. In fact, when she does later go to the doctor about her sleep problems, his advice to her is to stop reading the newspapers but if she has to then only to read The Times, and that listening to the wireless four times a day as she does is ‘three times too often’. I think those of us living through the current pandemic can have some sympathy with that, although at least Margaret didn’t have to cope with 24-hour news and social media.
There are welcome moments of humour, many of them provided by the redoubtable Nanny Ross whose habit of mispronouncing words frequently creates confusion. For example, ‘Nanny says that an Abbess is threatening to swallow the whole of Europe’. I chuckled too at the author’s observation about Cotter, the gardener who presides over their garden with ruthless efficiency, ‘It’s my belief that he was born giving instructions to the midwife’. And Margaret is less than impressed with some of the invasion precautions they are encouraged to take such as, if leaving a car unattended, not just taking out the ignition key but, in her words pretty well disembowelling it, because ‘the Germans know all about hairpins’.
One of the many things I loved about the book is the persistent sense of defiance and fortitude. I found this remarkable given the author did not know at the time whether the war would end in victory or defeat. For example, at one point she writes: ‘But every month, every week, day, hour and minute that we manage to hold on brings it [Hitler’s downfall] that much nearer. Every day will show the world more clearly what Nazism really is, and open the eyes of those still blind, and convince people that any sacrifice is better than submission’.
There is a message of hope for the future as well. Writing in August 1940 in a chapter titled ‘Owed By So Many To So Few’, the author’s fervent wish is: ‘By the grace of God we may emerge from this ordeal a more admirable society than we were when we went in’. But she’s also clear-eyed about the perilous situation the country faces. ‘We are not giving in. We are just going on fighting… Nobody can let us down any more, because we are fighting alone… Hitler may win; I suppose the odds are still heavily on his side. But, please God, we’ll give him such a pounding before he does that he’ll never be the same man after it’. Positively Churchillian, isn’t it? And at the start of the Blitz, despite the fact her husband is working in London, Kennedy observes, ‘Hitler made a mistake when he bombed Buck House [Buckingham Palace] …Buck House and Limehouse are the two places where he won’t find quitters’.
The book contains some wonderful descriptive writing. I was particularly taken with a scene in which Margaret walks to the top of nearby Holmbury Hill. ‘You look south there for miles and miles across Surrey and Sussex, over a patchwork of little fields and smudges of woods and the red roofs of farmhouses. On the horizon is the blue line of the South Downs, and a little knob of one of them which is the clump of huge beeches called Chanctonbury Ring. And beyond them is the sea. And beyond that France. And there, under the same cloudless sky, all this hell of suffering and terror is going on at this very moment. Farms are blazing. Homeless wretches stray along the road. Mothers howl for dead babies, and children for dead mothers. And our men are dying in this sunshine upon a soil they could not defend.’
In her foreword to the book, dated May 1941, the author writes, ‘All my life I have had a great curiosity to know what it felt like to live through history… Lately, I have lived through history myself – quite a bit of history‘. Reading the book, I felt I had joined Margaret on that journey. As she observes, ‘we have certainly taken life to pieces and found out what it is made of‘. Where Margaret is concerned, I think we can safely say it was made of strong stuff.
For anyone interested in women’s writing or the experiences of those on the ‘Home Front’ during the Second World War, Where Stands A Wingèd Sentry is a gem waiting to be discovered amongst the growing list of titles published by Handheld Press.
Where Stands A Wingèd Sentry is Margaret Kennedy’s own day by day account of what she herself describes as her ‘inner battle’, involving everything from resolving everyday domestic challenges to difficult decisions about the safety of her family. Although written with one eye on posterity, Margaret’s journal also seems to have been a sounding board for her concerns and worries. Frequently she lists the pro’s and con’s of things such as asking the doctor for sedatives to help her sleep, or the morality of taking advantage of evacuating her children to Canada. In fact, when she does later go to the doctor about her sleep problems, his advice to her is to stop reading the newspapers but if she has to then only to read The Times, and that listening to the wireless four times a day as she does is ‘three times too often’. I think those of us living through the current pandemic can have some sympathy with that, although at least Margaret didn’t have to cope with 24-hour news and social media.
There are welcome moments of humour, many of them provided by the redoubtable Nanny Ross whose habit of mispronouncing words frequently creates confusion. For example, ‘Nanny says that an Abbess is threatening to swallow the whole of Europe’. I chuckled too at the author’s observation about Cotter, the gardener who presides over their garden with ruthless efficiency, ‘It’s my belief that he was born giving instructions to the midwife’. And Margaret is less than impressed with some of the invasion precautions they are encouraged to take such as, if leaving a car unattended, not just taking out the ignition key but, in her words pretty well disembowelling it, because ‘the Germans know all about hairpins’.
One of the many things I loved about the book is the persistent sense of defiance and fortitude. I found this remarkable given the author did not know at the time whether the war would end in victory or defeat. For example, at one point she writes: ‘But every month, every week, day, hour and minute that we manage to hold on brings it [Hitler’s downfall] that much nearer. Every day will show the world more clearly what Nazism really is, and open the eyes of those still blind, and convince people that any sacrifice is better than submission’.
There is a message of hope for the future as well. Writing in August 1940 in a chapter titled ‘Owed By So Many To So Few’, the author’s fervent wish is: ‘By the grace of God we may emerge from this ordeal a more admirable society than we were when we went in’. But she’s also clear-eyed about the perilous situation the country faces. ‘We are not giving in. We are just going on fighting… Nobody can let us down any more, because we are fighting alone… Hitler may win; I suppose the odds are still heavily on his side. But, please God, we’ll give him such a pounding before he does that he’ll never be the same man after it’. Positively Churchillian, isn’t it? And at the start of the Blitz, despite the fact her husband is working in London, Kennedy observes, ‘Hitler made a mistake when he bombed Buck House [Buckingham Palace] …Buck House and Limehouse are the two places where he won’t find quitters’.
The book contains some wonderful descriptive writing. I was particularly taken with a scene in which Margaret walks to the top of nearby Holmbury Hill. ‘You look south there for miles and miles across Surrey and Sussex, over a patchwork of little fields and smudges of woods and the red roofs of farmhouses. On the horizon is the blue line of the South Downs, and a little knob of one of them which is the clump of huge beeches called Chanctonbury Ring. And beyond them is the sea. And beyond that France. And there, under the same cloudless sky, all this hell of suffering and terror is going on at this very moment. Farms are blazing. Homeless wretches stray along the road. Mothers howl for dead babies, and children for dead mothers. And our men are dying in this sunshine upon a soil they could not defend.’
In her foreword to the book, dated May 1941, the author writes, ‘All my life I have had a great curiosity to know what it felt like to live through history… Lately, I have lived through history myself – quite a bit of history‘. Reading the book, I felt I had joined Margaret on that journey. As she observes, ‘we have certainly taken life to pieces and found out what it is made of‘. Where Margaret is concerned, I think we can safely say it was made of strong stuff.
For anyone interested in women’s writing or the experiences of those on the ‘Home Front’ during the Second World War, Where Stands A Wingèd Sentry is a gem waiting to be discovered amongst the growing list of titles published by Handheld Press.
February 6, 2021
"There was a time in the summer of 1940 when it almost seemed as if sheer badness was a dominant principle"
This is an account, written in 1941, of the summer of 1940 by Margaret Kennedy. She realizes she is living through history and wants to give her accounting of it for the future generation in her family. Kennedy makes a point to note she's an ordinary person, living an ordinary life. And that is what makes this book so completely fascinating and compelling to me. Her fears, her anger, her joys, and her worry for the future are so utterly relatable.
I also found this book to have so many eery parallels today when she discusses the rise of the Nazis. She mentions Hitler is a "spellbinder; an illusionist; he does things which we know are phony and yet we can't show him up". And observes "His Third Reich is the phoniest thing of all. His fellow thugs, Goering, Ribbentrop, and all, are known to have arranged their getaway, and have huge fortunes safely stowed in neutral countries to which they can scuttle when the crash comes." (p 54) But he huffs and puffs and he blows the world down. Kennedy wonders at the world her children will grow up in (as I'm sure all mothers did) and vocalizes her fears for them and others during these summer months. Her correspondence with her American friends is interesting because some still don't get what is happening and write that England just needs to try harder. Kennedy is kind and logical in explaining to the diary readers her understanding of the American perspective. She then writes that perhaps both countries have two different views of what constitutes democracy. One of my favorite parts of the book is when Kennedy tries to explain to her Kansas acquaintance what it is that "Americans don't like about the British" in a scene from Little Women involving Meg March, John Brooke, and Miss Kate. It was very well done and her friend's response "Who are Meg March, and John Brooke and Miss Kate? Are they people in a book?"
Kennedy writes "Dammit! I'm a better Yank than she is. I'll never her hear the end of this. I've a good mind to send her a cable: "LITTLE WOMEN WHERE WAS YOU RAISED"
But beyond the politics and hope that America will enter the war. Kennedy writes on religion and the musings between people who pray for victory whether God will side with the praying Brits or the praying Germans? She also, writes of the influx of refugees and the suspicion of them and each other during preparations for potential air raids. Which do come. It is a heavy, dark summer. So much uncertainty hangs over their heads. In August, it culminates in a scene she writes about that moved me. She and her husband, come over from London, were picnicking. He remarks the day is August 15; the day Hitler said he would dictate world peace from Buck House. As they walk back a huge plane with a black crosses on it flies over. She writes "I wasn't frightened, I was in such a rage . My skin crawled on my bones and I jumped up and shouted " You....! (a word no lady uses). And I picked up a small stone and flung it at the plane. At least I meant to fling it at the plane, but it went in the opposite direction, as things always do when I throw them" (pg 183) It was a culmination of months of worry, fear, anger, and making plans for an uncertain future. She writes that she understands now how the mildest, most good tempered of boys can lead a bayonet charge.
Overall, I found this to be so compelling of read, worthy of a reread. It is full of the average human experience that doesn't make the history books. But it happened and Kennedy has captured it brilliantly.
This is an account, written in 1941, of the summer of 1940 by Margaret Kennedy. She realizes she is living through history and wants to give her accounting of it for the future generation in her family. Kennedy makes a point to note she's an ordinary person, living an ordinary life. And that is what makes this book so completely fascinating and compelling to me. Her fears, her anger, her joys, and her worry for the future are so utterly relatable.
I also found this book to have so many eery parallels today when she discusses the rise of the Nazis. She mentions Hitler is a "spellbinder; an illusionist; he does things which we know are phony and yet we can't show him up". And observes "His Third Reich is the phoniest thing of all. His fellow thugs, Goering, Ribbentrop, and all, are known to have arranged their getaway, and have huge fortunes safely stowed in neutral countries to which they can scuttle when the crash comes." (p 54) But he huffs and puffs and he blows the world down. Kennedy wonders at the world her children will grow up in (as I'm sure all mothers did) and vocalizes her fears for them and others during these summer months. Her correspondence with her American friends is interesting because some still don't get what is happening and write that England just needs to try harder. Kennedy is kind and logical in explaining to the diary readers her understanding of the American perspective. She then writes that perhaps both countries have two different views of what constitutes democracy. One of my favorite parts of the book is when Kennedy tries to explain to her Kansas acquaintance what it is that "Americans don't like about the British" in a scene from Little Women involving Meg March, John Brooke, and Miss Kate. It was very well done and her friend's response "Who are Meg March, and John Brooke and Miss Kate? Are they people in a book?"
Kennedy writes "Dammit! I'm a better Yank than she is. I'll never her hear the end of this. I've a good mind to send her a cable: "LITTLE WOMEN WHERE WAS YOU RAISED"
But beyond the politics and hope that America will enter the war. Kennedy writes on religion and the musings between people who pray for victory whether God will side with the praying Brits or the praying Germans? She also, writes of the influx of refugees and the suspicion of them and each other during preparations for potential air raids. Which do come. It is a heavy, dark summer. So much uncertainty hangs over their heads. In August, it culminates in a scene she writes about that moved me. She and her husband, come over from London, were picnicking. He remarks the day is August 15; the day Hitler said he would dictate world peace from Buck House. As they walk back a huge plane with a black crosses on it flies over. She writes "I wasn't frightened, I was in such a rage . My skin crawled on my bones and I jumped up and shouted " You....! (a word no lady uses). And I picked up a small stone and flung it at the plane. At least I meant to fling it at the plane, but it went in the opposite direction, as things always do when I throw them" (pg 183) It was a culmination of months of worry, fear, anger, and making plans for an uncertain future. She writes that she understands now how the mildest, most good tempered of boys can lead a bayonet charge.
Overall, I found this to be so compelling of read, worthy of a reread. It is full of the average human experience that doesn't make the history books. But it happened and Kennedy has captured it brilliantly.
August 8, 2022
This is the journal of Margaret Kennedy (author of The Feast) during the summer of 1940 in England.
It's kind of a sobering read, and made me realize just how filtered our view of history is when we can look back and know precisely who won the war and how things developed. From such a hindsight-is-20/20 view, it can be difficult to imagine the feelings of those who actually lived during the war, including all their fears and very real trauma as they wondered what was going to happen to themselves and their children. For them, it was by no means the foregone conclusion that it is for us.
Margaret Kennedy's journal was, therefore, a slightly harrowing, agitating read. And yet it was peculiarly relatable for people who have been through, or at least witnessed, traumas of one variety or another the last couple of years.
Her writing is strong and sincere, as one would expect, as she records things that are comedic, things that are frustrating, and things that are terrifying all at the same time.
Here are some excerpts. (Tell me that the last one doesn't resonate DEEPLY!)
-----------------------------------------------
I gave them a little lecture on the chins-up-we-are-all-in-the-front-line theme. Later on Lucy brought me a postcard which she had written to a school crony. It said: "The waw is getting very bad and we are learning to nit."
If you think of it as the waw it does not seem so frightening somehow.
-----------------------------------------------
She reminded me about Pearl, a little servant, a regular alley-cat of a girl from a terribly poor slum home. When Pearl heard that Hitler said he would be in London by August 15, she said, in amusement rather than indignation:
"Eh! The cheeky monkey!"
This cheers us both up. We agreed that it is an example of the unsuggestibility which may be our great national safeguard. We may be able to stand the bombs if we don't get a superstitious fear of the men who drop them...
-----------------------------------------------
Beryl, who lives six miles from here, came to tea. She is sustained, even now, by knowing more than anybody else. There are people who would be jaunty in hell, so long as they could run about spreading titbits of inside information about what Asmodeus said to Lucifer the other day.
-----------------------------------------------
We all find it difficult to sleep, these days. I expect we shall learn how to, in time, when we have got used to living through history.
-----------------------------------------------
Last night I got so desperate that I went out onto the roof of the music room. I thought if I couldn't sleep I might at least get some air, for the blackout makes our bedrooms stuffy... I took up a quilt and a pillow and dragged the sofa out under the sky and watched 'the moon set and the Pleiades".
One by one the stars vanished and the night ticked on from moment to moment till it came to that mysterious pause it makes just before the start of a new day, as if the earth hesitated for a few seconds, and then got the order to roll on. Then a cock crew down in the valley and I heard the ponies snorting in their stable. The light came back into the bowl of the air, drop by drop, till I could see the black ridges of the pine woods on the hills. A wind came and rustled the trees. The dawn smells of earth and moss and leaves began to rise up, and the morning star appeared in a sky of palest aquamarine. The world was rushing over to the sun and the upshot beam mounted higher and higher until all the little clouds in the zenith flushed pink.
-----------------------------------------------
I still cannot sleep so I went to Dr Middleton to ask for a bromide. He used to attend all our family in the old days. He asked:
"Are ye worrying about anything?"
When I said I was worrying about Hitler coming, he said, "He won't," so firmly that I almost believed him. He looked me up and down very crossly and said:
"I suppose ye've been reading the newspapers?"
I pleaded guilty.
"What d'ye want to do that for?"
"I like to know what is happening."
...He asked me how often I listened to the wireless.
"Four times a day."
"And that's three times too often. I'm sure I wish that infernal contrivance had never been invented. When I think of all the insanity that's poured out over the ether every minute of the day, I wonder the whole human race isn't in a lunatic asylum. And what good does it do ye to know what's happening? Ye aren't responsible. Ye don't like it. Ye can't stop it. Why think about it? Go home and fly kites with your children."
"How many other patients have you said all this to?"
"You're only the twenty-seventh this week."
(Whew! It's somehow kind of comforting to know that human reactions to stressful times aren't new.)
It's kind of a sobering read, and made me realize just how filtered our view of history is when we can look back and know precisely who won the war and how things developed. From such a hindsight-is-20/20 view, it can be difficult to imagine the feelings of those who actually lived during the war, including all their fears and very real trauma as they wondered what was going to happen to themselves and their children. For them, it was by no means the foregone conclusion that it is for us.
Margaret Kennedy's journal was, therefore, a slightly harrowing, agitating read. And yet it was peculiarly relatable for people who have been through, or at least witnessed, traumas of one variety or another the last couple of years.
Her writing is strong and sincere, as one would expect, as she records things that are comedic, things that are frustrating, and things that are terrifying all at the same time.
Here are some excerpts. (Tell me that the last one doesn't resonate DEEPLY!)
-----------------------------------------------
I gave them a little lecture on the chins-up-we-are-all-in-the-front-line theme. Later on Lucy brought me a postcard which she had written to a school crony. It said: "The waw is getting very bad and we are learning to nit."
If you think of it as the waw it does not seem so frightening somehow.
-----------------------------------------------
She reminded me about Pearl, a little servant, a regular alley-cat of a girl from a terribly poor slum home. When Pearl heard that Hitler said he would be in London by August 15, she said, in amusement rather than indignation:
"Eh! The cheeky monkey!"
This cheers us both up. We agreed that it is an example of the unsuggestibility which may be our great national safeguard. We may be able to stand the bombs if we don't get a superstitious fear of the men who drop them...
-----------------------------------------------
Beryl, who lives six miles from here, came to tea. She is sustained, even now, by knowing more than anybody else. There are people who would be jaunty in hell, so long as they could run about spreading titbits of inside information about what Asmodeus said to Lucifer the other day.
-----------------------------------------------
We all find it difficult to sleep, these days. I expect we shall learn how to, in time, when we have got used to living through history.
-----------------------------------------------
Last night I got so desperate that I went out onto the roof of the music room. I thought if I couldn't sleep I might at least get some air, for the blackout makes our bedrooms stuffy... I took up a quilt and a pillow and dragged the sofa out under the sky and watched 'the moon set and the Pleiades".
One by one the stars vanished and the night ticked on from moment to moment till it came to that mysterious pause it makes just before the start of a new day, as if the earth hesitated for a few seconds, and then got the order to roll on. Then a cock crew down in the valley and I heard the ponies snorting in their stable. The light came back into the bowl of the air, drop by drop, till I could see the black ridges of the pine woods on the hills. A wind came and rustled the trees. The dawn smells of earth and moss and leaves began to rise up, and the morning star appeared in a sky of palest aquamarine. The world was rushing over to the sun and the upshot beam mounted higher and higher until all the little clouds in the zenith flushed pink.
-----------------------------------------------
I still cannot sleep so I went to Dr Middleton to ask for a bromide. He used to attend all our family in the old days. He asked:
"Are ye worrying about anything?"
When I said I was worrying about Hitler coming, he said, "He won't," so firmly that I almost believed him. He looked me up and down very crossly and said:
"I suppose ye've been reading the newspapers?"
I pleaded guilty.
"What d'ye want to do that for?"
"I like to know what is happening."
...He asked me how often I listened to the wireless.
"Four times a day."
"And that's three times too often. I'm sure I wish that infernal contrivance had never been invented. When I think of all the insanity that's poured out over the ether every minute of the day, I wonder the whole human race isn't in a lunatic asylum. And what good does it do ye to know what's happening? Ye aren't responsible. Ye don't like it. Ye can't stop it. Why think about it? Go home and fly kites with your children."
"How many other patients have you said all this to?"
"You're only the twenty-seventh this week."
(Whew! It's somehow kind of comforting to know that human reactions to stressful times aren't new.)
October 24, 2026
Good read. A memoir from an author who I really like (I’ve read lots of her books – you should check out ‘The Feast’ [5 stars from me] who was writing in real time – it was her diary of sorts – in the days leading up to Germany bombing London relentlessly during World War Two n 1941. It was more eerie than if she wrote at some later point in time her recollection of those days’ events. Because we, the readers, knew what was coming whereas she did not. World War Two was terrible….one of my uncles got killed in the war.
Reviews:
• https://whatcathyreadnext.co.uk/2021/...
• https://fromfirstpagetolast.wordpress...
• https://desperatereader.blogspot.com/...
Reviews:
• https://whatcathyreadnext.co.uk/2021/...
• https://fromfirstpagetolast.wordpress...
• https://desperatereader.blogspot.com/...
Read
October 1, 2023Such a vivid snapshot of history.
August 1, 2026
Somewhere, sometime, somehow it was crammed into my noggin to value first-person accounts of history.
Consequently, I am intrigued by books written in the middle of WW2, written in the context of not knowing the outcome. That's why I read 33 Days: A Memoir by Léon Worth [who, incidentally, is the one to whom Antoine de Saint-Exupéry dedicates The Little Prince]. Although not a memoir, the novel Suite Français by Irene Némirovsky was written in the midst of WW2.
After reading Margaret Kennedy's The Feast I wanted to read more. This war memoir covering May 1940 to November 1940 was a great choice.
Can you imagine this happening today?
Today we have all been to church because the King asked us to go. Every church, chapel, and meeting-house in the country has been packed during this week. [...] We like the King, and we are very sorry for him, as he has a stiff row to hoe. If it helps him to pray and to have us pray with him, to church we will go.
I love hymns, so I relished this nod to O God Our Help in Ages Past:
... we sang that hymn which always means "an occasion." We have been singing it all our lives at Coronations, Jubilees, and school prize-givings. It accompanies all our moments of communal emotion.
Consequently, I am intrigued by books written in the middle of WW2, written in the context of not knowing the outcome. That's why I read 33 Days: A Memoir by Léon Worth [who, incidentally, is the one to whom Antoine de Saint-Exupéry dedicates The Little Prince]. Although not a memoir, the novel Suite Français by Irene Némirovsky was written in the midst of WW2.
After reading Margaret Kennedy's The Feast I wanted to read more. This war memoir covering May 1940 to November 1940 was a great choice.
Can you imagine this happening today?
Today we have all been to church because the King asked us to go. Every church, chapel, and meeting-house in the country has been packed during this week. [...] We like the King, and we are very sorry for him, as he has a stiff row to hoe. If it helps him to pray and to have us pray with him, to church we will go.
I love hymns, so I relished this nod to O God Our Help in Ages Past:
... we sang that hymn which always means "an occasion." We have been singing it all our lives at Coronations, Jubilees, and school prize-givings. It accompanies all our moments of communal emotion.
Time, like an ever-rolling stream,
Bears all its sons away.
They fly forgotten...
March 15, 2021
When it comes to the British Home Front during WWII, the Blitz gets all the attention. As a Blitz-Lit lover myself, I won’t deny its historical dazzle. But having just finished a diary kept during the summer after Dunkirk - when Brits reasonably thought they could be invaded and even lose the war - I see why the “quiet” can be just as fascinating as the “storm”. A published historian, as well as a famous novelist, Kennedy has a keen sense for detail, dialogue and geopolitics. But she’s also a mother to three children, and she discovers that the qualities which make her diary so compelling, are not as practical as the staunch sentiments of her less “imaginative” fellow citizens. Her account has eerie echoes of the year we just endured: she penetrates the amorphous dread that arises when nothing too extraordinary is happening except History-with-a-capital-H. (And she manages to be really funny too.)
January 20, 2024
What a find! That's why I love libraries (and the Lit&Phil in Newcastle in particular) - places to stumble upon fantastic books and author's you've never heard of. I was totally unfamiliar with the author, and totally bowled over by her intelligence, liveliness, and the perspicacity of her observations during 6 months in 1941, covering the early parts of the Blitz. Rather than a memoir of the Blitz itself, the author, who sought to protect her children in Cornwall, has documented her fear of German invasion of Britain, which was a real prospect at that time, especially after the fall of France. It will always be difficult to put yourself in these shoes when we know what the outcome was, which is why this book is so valuable - not only for understanding that period, and what it was like to experience the unrolling of events, and what it's like to fear invasion. Another brilliant insight Margaret Kennedy affords is into the social classes of the time, and how they related to each other, and the sense (not shared by all but pervasive) that change was in the air. She brilliantly echoes the many diverse voices of a cross-section of people, often with with mischief, irony and satire, such as the consternation caused to the locals in the rural beauty and quiet of St Ives on arrival of the evacuated children from East London ('vaccies'). An absolutely cracking read. So good that this small publishing house has brought this 1941 book to our attention in Britain (it was originally published in the US). It also proves what a valuable contribution women's observations can make, especially in a good writer's hands. Read it!
January 17, 2024
This is a tremendous book, very moving and also very funny in places. It provides an interesting contrast to Vere Hodgson's wartime journal 'Few Eggs and No Oranges'. Whereas Hodgson was in the thick of the London blitz Kennedy avoided it but Kennedy seems to have been more politically and technically aware than Hodgson. Handheld Press are to be thanked for producing this first British edition of a significant work previously only published in the USA, though their proof-reading leaves a little to be desired: they note that the text was scanned from the Yale first edition and proof-read but somehow extraneous words 'I', 'if' and 'it' have been dropped into the text here and there.
June 24, 2021
A valuable journal of a privileged family life during the uncertain early months of World War II. A chronological record with insightful philosophical reflections at a time of great uncertainty.
October 16, 2026
Quick take: Where Stands a Wingèd Sentry is an ambitious, uneven science read that gets a lot right and a few things wrong. What worked: clear explanations of tricky ideas and a genuine sense of wonder. What didn't: the author gets a little carried away with big predictions that feel thin on evidence. Recommend for curious readers who like to wonder out loud, skip for anyone who wants strict, cautious science.
June 5, 2026
This is not a Mass Observation diary, but something akin to it but more literary; a writer's personal observations on the first year of the Second World War, noted in diary form at the time and compiled into a book in 1941 - so with a certain degree of editorial hindsight, but not a lot.
Margaret Kennedy was already a successful novelist and screenwriter, and this is a pretty polished piece of writing even in its episodic form; it reads perhaps like a series of columns submitted to a newspaper, concentrating as much on her thoughts *about* the war as on her experience of it personally, which in the West Country in 1940 was largely limited to witnessing local refugees/evacuees. As she says in her introduction, she thought it might be worth having a record of the perspective of the large proportion of the country that was not (at least at that time) directly affected by enemy action. And the angst of the would-be European Liberal, who had hoped to find herself a citizen of a United States of Europe but witnesses instead her beloved Austria and Italy being recast as enemy 'Huns' and 'Wops', is all too apt to the present, as are her musings on the 'idealist' who blossoms in wartime when every one else is held to his own unrelenting standards and the 'trimmer' who is required to carry out the hard-nosed political compromises that alone can bring a realistic and lasting peace... and on America and the Americans.
But she loves her country and on the whole admires the qualities of her fellow countrymen, however stubborn or ill-educated they may be. She speaks shame-facedly of finding herself looking round to make sure that no one is watching before kissing the grass in her favourite childhood bathing-place, and of how no German would be embarrassed to own such a sentiment, but she is also filled with visceral hatred of the enemy planes that fly overhead. She is very conscious of the physical differences between her own well-nourished children with their access to a doctor for every ailment and the scrawny East End evacuees marred by hunger and childhood disease, and is adamant that after the war this sort of poverty can't be allowed to go on.
The book is an unselfconscious snapshot of a certain moment in time from a certain perspective, and is interesting precisely because it is not, precisely, a war diary. We hear for the first time of General de Gaulle (initially misheard as Gèle), as yet only famous as an outstanding tank commander, and witness the trains of men returning from Dunkirk only as they pass through the station. Children up the coast get to boast about playing with a deactivated mine, and the author angsts about how if only the Government had taken the advice of her friends about bomb shelters in 1938 - and is very grateful to Chamberlain for winning an extra year of peace at Munich at a time when Britain was utterly unprepared for war.
And life goes on in a little seaside town in Cornwall.
Margaret Kennedy was already a successful novelist and screenwriter, and this is a pretty polished piece of writing even in its episodic form; it reads perhaps like a series of columns submitted to a newspaper, concentrating as much on her thoughts *about* the war as on her experience of it personally, which in the West Country in 1940 was largely limited to witnessing local refugees/evacuees. As she says in her introduction, she thought it might be worth having a record of the perspective of the large proportion of the country that was not (at least at that time) directly affected by enemy action. And the angst of the would-be European Liberal, who had hoped to find herself a citizen of a United States of Europe but witnesses instead her beloved Austria and Italy being recast as enemy 'Huns' and 'Wops', is all too apt to the present, as are her musings on the 'idealist' who blossoms in wartime when every one else is held to his own unrelenting standards and the 'trimmer' who is required to carry out the hard-nosed political compromises that alone can bring a realistic and lasting peace... and on America and the Americans.
But she loves her country and on the whole admires the qualities of her fellow countrymen, however stubborn or ill-educated they may be. She speaks shame-facedly of finding herself looking round to make sure that no one is watching before kissing the grass in her favourite childhood bathing-place, and of how no German would be embarrassed to own such a sentiment, but she is also filled with visceral hatred of the enemy planes that fly overhead. She is very conscious of the physical differences between her own well-nourished children with their access to a doctor for every ailment and the scrawny East End evacuees marred by hunger and childhood disease, and is adamant that after the war this sort of poverty can't be allowed to go on.
The book is an unselfconscious snapshot of a certain moment in time from a certain perspective, and is interesting precisely because it is not, precisely, a war diary. We hear for the first time of General de Gaulle (initially misheard as Gèle), as yet only famous as an outstanding tank commander, and witness the trains of men returning from Dunkirk only as they pass through the station. Children up the coast get to boast about playing with a deactivated mine, and the author angsts about how if only the Government had taken the advice of her friends about bomb shelters in 1938 - and is very grateful to Chamberlain for winning an extra year of peace at Munich at a time when Britain was utterly unprepared for war.
And life goes on in a little seaside town in Cornwall.
May 9, 2025
This is a remarkable book, and I’m so thankful it exists. It stands outside of time. Though specific to WW2 Britain, it covers all those dark thoughts that women throughout history have had to ask themselves. How do we face such terrible evil in the world? Why did I bring my children into this? How much do I tell them? What will their future be like? Do I have what it takes to make the right choices when the time comes? And most of all, how are we to spend our time when it seems like the world is ending? All of this with wit, humor, intelligence, and perseverance in hope.
June 1, 2015
Memoir of 1940 England by the novelist Margaret Kennedy.
April 28, 2024
this should be required reading for anyone learning about wwii for the first time
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