Love in the Blitz

With the intimacy and wit of a Second World War Bridget Jones, Eileen Alexander offers a portal into life during the Blitz: - The sex, joys and cruelties of young love - for Eileen with a man who had just inadvertently involved her in a car crash, for her friends with some less-than-honourable specimens - The frustrations of coming of age in an era 'suspended between an unborn tomorrow & dead yesterday' - The tragedies of rationed textiles ('apropos French Knickers & Respectability ... You've no idea what a lot of difference a bit of elastic can make'), With Eileen, a Jewish woman in her twenties crackling with intelligence, we sink into the reality of wartime London - particularly as it was lived for women. She is hilariously caustic about colleagues and political figures, confessional to the gossipy and emotional extremes, and brilliantly frank on the feeling of derailed hopes and ambition.

Above all, these letters - rescued from oblivion by a chance eBay purchase - tell an unbelievable love story. Thi