Eileen Alexander fell in love amidst the falling of bombs. Graduating from Cambridge in 1939, she had just been injured in a car crash and had firm ambitions of studying further, making herself useful and absolutely not getting married.
Her letters offer a love story and a unique snapshot of the home front, as well as resurrecting the voice of a profoundly funny writer.
‘I wonder what anyone would think if they suddenly came across my letters to you & started reading them in chronological order?’ Eileen wrote in 1941. ‘I think they’d say “This girl never lived till she loved” – and it would be true, darling.’
‘Her voice is absolutely, beguilingly conversational … Intelligent, allusive, iconoclastic, captivatingly intense … This is the news from the domestic front line: personal, unique, unexpurgated, without propaganda, as it unfolded and was experienced … Splendid’
William Boyd, Guardian
