A Vicar's Wife in Oxford, 1938-1943: The Diary of Madge Martin

by Patricia Malcolmson and Robert Malcolmson

Patricia Malcolmson (Editor) and Robert Malcolmson (Editor)

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Book cover for A Vicar's Wife in Oxford, 1938-1943

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War had an impact on even genteel civilians in unraided cities like Oxford (though safety was never assured), among them Madge Martin (born 1899), wife of the vicar of St Michael at the North Gate, Oxford. Her pre-war life, full of travel, theatre visits, walks, books and films, was jolted into very different realities: she found herself undertaking more housework (by 1943 she had lost both her maids), volunteering with the Red Cross, and housing her two sisters' families, who self-evacuated at different times to Madge's home to escape London's air raids.
Her private diary, engagingly and accessibly written, discloses much about her thoughts and feelings and social relations; some tribulations (she endured serious and frequent headaches); and her ambivalences concerning her role as a parson's wife. It shows both the persistence of comfortable, established lifestyles and necessary adaptations to theconstraints of existing in wartime. It is presented here with notes and introduction.

PATRICIA and ROBERT MALCOLMSON are social historians with a special interest in Mass Observation, women in World War Two, and Englishdiaries written between the 1930s and the 1950s.
  • ISBN10 0902509748
  • ISBN13 9780902509740
  • Publish Date 20 September 2018
  • Publish Status Active
  • Publish Country GB
  • Imprint Oxfordshire Record Society
  • Format Hardcover
  • Pages 292
  • Language English