Reading the 20th Century discussion

Anyone come across Joan Wyndham?


I've just started Love Lessons (1985) by Joan Wyndham

A top tip from GoodReads friend Mark

Early days but so far it's very interesting and enjoyable

August 1939. As a teenage Catholic virgin, Joan Wyndham spent her days trying to remain pure and unsullied and her nights trying to stay alive. Huddled in the air-raid shelter, she wrote secretly and obsessively about the strange yet exhilarating times she was living through, sure that this was 'the happiest time of my life'

I love that book must have read it at least three times, reread it recently and am just in the middle of the sequel Love Lessons and Love Is Blue: Diaries of the War Years which I've never read before.

Alwynne wrote: "I love that book must have read it at least three times, reread it recently and am just in the middle of the sequel Love Lessons and Love Is Blue: Diaries of the War Years which I've..."

My pal Mark is also reading the follow up Love Is Blue A Wartime Diary - I think I'll be following your example too Alwynne. I love her attitude.

I am enjoying Joan Wyndham's...


Love Lessons (1985)

...so much that I have just been on eBay to buy copies of...

Love is Blue: A Wartime Diary (1986)

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.

and

Anything Once (1992)

The final volume of Joan Wyndham's three-volume autobiography. The first two books were "Love Lessons" and "Love is Blue". After leaving the WAAF, Joan Wyndham was determined to be "gloriously, totally and dangerously free". From living in an early British tomb on the Scilly Isles and being arrested for vagrancy, spending five years under the hypnotic spell of a homosexual psychopath, taking her first acid trip at the age of 50, to researching rent boys for women in Amsterdam's red-light district and living in a tent, cooking brown rice and vegetables at pop festivals, Joan Wyndham leaves the reader in no doubt that she has fulfilled her objective. However, there have been other dimensions, too, to her life: after the bewitching 1960s and life as a 42-year-old hippy, the 1980s brought her sharply back down to earth. She had to cope with the suicide of a close friend, as well as her own, finally successful, fight against cancer.

It's gonna be a Wyndham Fest

I was a little disappointed by the sequel, it doesn't have the spontaneous charm of the first diary but still interesting as an account of life during WW2 in Britain. Look forward to seeing what you make of the final book Nigey.

Link to my review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Thanks Alwynne


I'll keep you posted

Still really enjoying Joan Wyndham's Love Lessons (1985). I'm confident both Susan and Judy would enjoy this too. Probably plenty more besides. Great to get a teenage perspective on life in wartime London

Thanks for the recommendation, Nigeyb, sounds very tempting.

Judy wrote: "Thanks for the recommendation, Nigeyb, sounds very tempting."


It's yet another variation on the whole The Love-charm of Bombs: Restless Lives in the Second World War vibe but also different as these are teenage diaries of a life in bohemian London which are both charming and fascinating.

Joan describes the idiosyncratic and distinctive characters in her life so vividly. I have to keep reminding myself these people were around in late 1930s London.

Nigeyb wrote:


"I've just started Love Lessons (1985) by Joan Wyndham "

Finished now

Highly recommended

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

4/5

I've now finished the second volume of diaries..


Love is Blue: A Wartime Diary (1986)

Splendid it is too

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

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.

Good review, Nigeyb. Definitely sounds like something I would enjoy

Susan wrote:


"Good review, Nigeyb. Definitely sounds like something I would enjoy"

I am sure you'd love it Susan

I'm onto volume three of Joan's diaries/memoir....


Anything Once (1993)

Already immersed

The final volume of Joan Wyndham's three-volume autobiography. The first two books were "Love Lessons" and "Love is Blue". After leaving the WAAF, Joan Wyndham was determined to be "gloriously, totally and dangerously free". From living in an early British tomb on the Scilly Isles and being arrested for vagrancy, spending five years under the hypnotic spell of a homosexual psychopath, taking her first acid trip at the age of 50, to researching rent boys for women in Amsterdam's red-light district and living in a tent, cooking brown rice and vegetables at pop festivals, Joan Wyndham leaves the reader in no doubt that she has fulfilled her objective. However, there have been other dimensions, too, to her life: after the bewitching 1960s and life as a 42-year-old hippy, the 1980s brought her sharply back down to earth. She had to cope with the suicide of a close friend, as well as her own, finally successful, fight against cancer.

I've now finished volume three of Joan's diaries/memoir....


Anything Once (1993)

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

3/5



The final volume of Joan Wyndham's three-volume autobiography. The first two books were "Love Lessons" and "Love is Blue". After leaving the WAAF, Joan Wyndham was determined to be "gloriously, totally and dangerously free". From living in an early British tomb on the Scilly Isles and being arrested for vagrancy, spending five years under the hypnotic spell of a homosexual psychopath, taking her first acid trip at the age of 50, to researching rent boys for women in Amsterdam's red-light district and living in a tent, cooking brown rice and vegetables at pop festivals, Joan Wyndham leaves the reader in no doubt that she has fulfilled her objective. However, there have been other dimensions, too, to her life: after the bewitching 1960s and life as a 42-year-old hippy, the 1980s brought her sharply back down to earth. She had to cope with the suicide of a close friend, as well as her own, finally successful, fight against cancer.

Great, I think I'll wait and see if I come across this one, from your review doesn't sound as compelling as the earlier ones but I wouldn't mind finding out what happened to Joan in later life. Although it's also sad in that having that kind of nomadic, bohemian life now would be almost impossible here now, and that's without the pandemic.

Definitely not essential but now you are invested you will find plenty to enjoy. I'm not so sure that it's impossible to live her lifestyle any more. Definitely harder but doable. It's more of an attitude than anything. I could never be so reckless, spontaneous and short term. She was irrepressible, despite making some extraordinary mistakes. In this book she is on the fringes of the counterculture, catering at 70s festivals and goes off to stay in Ibiza and live a hippy lifestyle. It's quite a tale. That said, there are sections which felt included to pad out the book (Amsterdam - I'll say no more but so you'll recognise it when you get to read it).

I picked up my copy on eBay for £4 incl p&p

Maybe it's possible in different parts of England but being able to afford to live seems much harder now than then, housing alone is so expensive. From talking to people who lived like that at the time, it was much easier to squat or get some form of social housing, get benefits in between jobs, and also culturally far more acceptable.

All good points Alwynne. She never squatted or lived without working. From what I could glean she was always working, except maybe when her children were very young. Although never made explicit, it sounds as though her mother was fairly wealthy, certainly other family members were, so perhaps she was given the odd handout? Generally my impression was that she always found some kind of work to sustain her and managed to buy two properties, one I think through some kind of small inheritance.

One thing's certain though, she was a true bohemian who did her own thing and lived life without any kind of plan.

The cost of housing is indeed the killer for today's would-be bohemian.

Yes inheritance makes a big difference. I was puzzling over the decision by a character based on Kate Zambreno in her To Write as If Already Dead to have a second child when her life seems to have been totally derailed by having her first, aside from the ways that being a mother's disrupted her work and made her ill, money is a huge issue. And given that she's someone who would have a choice available it seemed a strange thing to do to herself. It made me think about the women I know, many haven't been tempted to have children, but the only ones I know well, who live like Wyndham (and writers like Zambreno) and have children have family money behind them. So on the surface they seem to have very precarious finances and tick all the countercultural boxes, but they live in flats and houses paid for by their parents or via inheritances. Although some of them still struggle a little.

There are some extracts from Joan Wyndham's memoirs in Millions Like Us: Women's Lives During the Second World War by Virginia Nicholson, which I'm currently listening to on Audible, so I'm getting a taster of her writing - this book seems to draw heavily on printed memoirs, so will doubtless lead me to several other authors too.

Alwynne, my daughter was reading To Write as If Already Dead when we were on holiday together a few weeks ago and told me a bit about it. I was intrigued but am not sure when/if I will get to it, and whether I would read the Guibert first.

Thanks for sharing that Judy


How are you getting on with Millions Like Us?

I'm enjoying it so far, Nigeyb, but I'm not very far in as I am a very slow listener to audiobooks! It's interesting to get a taste of many different women's experiences during the war. Early days as yet, but I wonder if the fact that it draws on printed memoirs so much will mean there is more about middle-class and upper-class women.

Judy wrote: "There are some extracts from Joan Wyndham's memoirs in Millions Like Us: Women's Lives During the Second World War by Virginia Nicholson, which I'm currently listeni..."

I've been wondering about the Nicholson, look forward to hearing more about it. I think the Zambreno could work without reading Guibert but he's worth reading and there is a newly published translation now.

I see what you mean about diaries, a lot of the most famous ones like Frances Partridge's are upper/upper mid women but I suppose there are also the Mass Observation diaries like Nella Last's and I've read ones by schoolteachers etc. May Smith's These Wonderful Rumours!: A Young Schoolteacher's Wartime Diaries 1939-1945 is one I remember enjoying, although not much else about it.

Nella Last has actually already been quoted, so I will listen out for more about her life. Thanks for mentioning These Wonderful Rumours - it's another book that I'd been wondering about.

Have you tried Emma Smith's Maidens' Trip? That's one I particularly liked, May Smith's diary is very readable but not outstanding

Alwynne wrote: "Have you tried Emma Smith's Maidens' Trip? That's one I particularly liked, May Smith's diary is very readable but not outstanding"

Sorry, I somehow missed the comment - I hadn't heard of Maidens' Trip but it sounds very interesting. I've added to my TBR.

I'm about a third of the way through Millions Like Us: Women's Lives in War and Peace 1939-1949 now and enjoying it - there hasn't been all that much more about Joan Wyndham so far, but the extracts I've heard have whetted my appetite.

It actually has many extracts from Mass Observation and other diaries and memoirs from a wide range of women, so it isn't as upper-crust overall as I'd expected. The posh accents by the team of readers in the audio version tend to be more convincing than their attempts at Cockney or Birmingham accents!

There is quite a lot from books I've already read, including Spam Tomorrow by Verily Anderson and A Chelsea Concerto by Frances Faviell, which I believe have both come back into print via Dean Street Press/Furrowed Middlebrow since this book was published.

Judy wrote: "Alwynne wrote: "Have you tried Emma Smith's Maidens' Trip? That's one I particularly liked, May Smith's diary is very readable but not outstanding"

Sorry, I somehow missed the comme..."

I think you'd enjoy it. I liked the Verily Anderson and was very impressed by the Faviell. The Nicolson sounds fascinating I must track down a copy, glad you're relishing it so much!

Thank you, Alwynne. It's become more interesting as it goes on - I've just listened to a bit about how a tyrannical boss tried to enforce a strict dress code in his office that all women must wear stockings, even when he knew perfectly well that stockings were much too expensive and the policy was unworkable.

Getting back to Joan Wyndham, I see Love Lessons sadly isn't on Kindle, but will hope to pick up a copy before too long.

Judy wrote:


"Getting back to Joan Wyndham, I see Love Lessons sadly isn't on Kindle, but will hope to pick up a copy before too long."

I found a reaonably priced copy on eBay - along with her other books.