Jambusters: The remarkable story which has inspired the ITV drama Home Fires

by Julie Summers

The Second World War was the WI's finest hour. The whole of its previous history - two decades of educating, entertaining and supporting women and campaigning on women's issues - culminated in the enormous collective responsibility felt by the members to 'do their bit' for Britain. With all the vigour, energy and enthusiasm at their disposal, a third of a million country women set out to make their lives and the lives of those around them more bearable in what they described as 'a period of insanity'.

Jambusterstells the story of the minute and idiosyncratic details of everyday life during the Second World War. Making jam, making do and mending, gathering rosehips, keeping pigs and rabbits, housing evacuees, setting up canteens for the troops, knitting, singing and campaigning for a better Britain after the war: all these activities played a crucial role in war time.

• ISBN10: 1849832218
• ISBN13: 9781849832212
• Publish Date: 13 March 2014 (first published 28 February 2013)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Simon & Schuster Ltd
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 368
• Language: English

Reviews

[MurderByDeath]

A very good and inspiriting look at what The Women's Institutes were able to achieve to keep Great Britain going during WWII.  What these women were able to do every single day for years both during and after the war is purely mind-boggling to someone from a later, much more leisurely, era.

I'd never heard of The Women's Institute before reading this book, but everything they stand for and strive to achieve makes them very much a community I'd like to be a part of if I lived in a rural part of the UK (in order to have a local institute, a town/village had to be beneath a certain population ceiling), but the amount of hard work they put in (or did during the war) is admittedly, daunting.

The book was generally well-written, although telling this story requires a lot of names and a lot places and it was a constant challenge trying to keep it all straight as names were introduced and then reappeared in later chapters.  There were also enough copy-editing errors to be noticed, which is somehow especially disappointing in non-fiction; I shouldn't hold it to a higher standard, but I do.

Jambusters has whet my appetite for more narrative history of the home front during WWII and I'll be on the lookout for interesting ones.  Anyone have any recommendations?