Few Eggs and No Oranges is a diary that I’ve been reading for some time – months in fact. Considering that I usually read two to three books a week, you might think that I didn’t like this book. Unfortunately, you’d be completely wrong because I really enjoyed this real-life diary of life as a Londoner during World War II and I wanted to savour each entry. It gives an account that is harrowing, scary and ultimately joyful of how the everyday English man and woman lived during the war. How sometimes they’d go to bed not knowing whether they’d wake up in a pile of rubble – or not at all – or wouldn’t sleep for days on end due to the bombs falling on the city. Hodgson doesn’t write everyday (the diary was originally letters to her cousin Lucy in Rhodesia) but she gives accounts of the mundane (no colanders to be bought for love or money) to the terrifying (silent bombs). The entries are wonderful accounts of the day to day life of a woman trying to work, look after family and have a social life while war rages around her.

The diary starts in June 1940 and ends with VE Day in May 1945. It is as expected, predominantly focused on the war in Europe, not so much in the Pacific and on the people of Europe (again to be expected – would you think about a war half a world away when you and everyone you know are having bombs rained on them). I think this aspect was beneficial for me, as being Australian I know more about the Pacific side of things than the European front. Vere’s diary demonstrates just how perilous day to day life was for the average person in London. Initially, there would be bombs all night (and towards the end of the war, during the day too) and people would be calculating how far away bombs had fallen and who had ‘copped it’. Vere herself goes out on weekends to see the damage – department stores, churches, theatres – it seems like most of London was devastated. She also mentions when going home to Birmingham for holidays how ‘normal’ it was to wait hours and hours for a train – then to stand squished in the corner for the hours-long journey. There are also the little things we don’t think about – the disappearance of fish, fruits and vegetables to buy – even eggs are a rare treat for those in the city. Vere and her friends have treats that they save up for a party or victory, things that we’d take for granted, such as butter. It is humbling to read of people living as normally as possible when faced with death on a regular basis.

Another thing that shines through is Vere and England’s faith in Churchill. She mentions his broadcasts and reflects on them extensively, in addition to his meetings with various other politicians. It’s interesting to contrast her faith in him with how we feel about our modern day politicians – I think that we would not be as confident in their action and motivations, or perhaps as patriotic. It also made me wonder how important Churchill was to motivating and maintaining the morale of the English was. It sounds like an awful time, but Vere and her friends and family manage to have a giggle, parties and weddings.

I enjoyed this extensive diary of wartime London and felt I had a better understanding of what life was like during this time. Thanks Vere.

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This was a very long book, would be wonderful resource for a researcher. There was much that was repetitive, but in some ways I found it to be riveting. Became interested in the people. I did scan much of it. Was day by day diary of life mostly in London during the bombings of WW II. ( )

I've been stuck in World War II for a little bit now with my reading. These true diaries put the fiction in context. I collect women's diaries and this was a good one to share life in wartime. ( )

Phew! I made it to the end of this almost 600 page diary of London in wartime. It's a very good record of what life was like in our capital city from the time that the bombing raids started in earnest in June 1940 until the end of the war in May 1945.

Vere Hodgson is an interesting diarist and I think this book will stand the test of time as a true account of the war. I would probably have liked a little more depth to the people she wrote about, but apart from that I think this book was a good read. She wrote the diary initially to send to her cousin, who had moved to Rhodesia, but I think that by the end a number of people overseas were reading it.

Several things really struck me, such as the constant, night after night, raids during 1940. I wonder how Vere would have felt writing about it if she had known the war would go on for another five years. Also the rationing and the difficulty in getting hold of fruit. When it was available it was often extortionately priced. And simple things like trying to buy sheets was virtually impossible. I could go on, but basically the diary was an eye-opener in that although I knew about these things, actually reading them from the point of view of somebody who was there really brought it home. ( )

Few Eggs and No Oranges is the diary that Vere Hodgson kept during the war years. The diary reprinted here covers the “official” start of the war on June 25, 1940, and takes us up through VE Day, May 1945.

The subtitle is “A diary showing how unimportant people in London and Birmingham lived through the war years 1940-45, written in the Notting Hill area of London,” and that’s a pretty good summary of what this book is about. Vere Hodgson lets very little of her own personal feelings in (aside from her obvious hero-worship of Churchill), but she gives detailed updates about what’s going on politically. We get very little sense of the people she spends her days with, and very little about Vere’s personality, either. And yet, this book is a fascinating read, mostly because it follows her every day doings, even as extraordinary things were going on around her. And what I also liked was that Vere Hodgson is so unfailingly honest. And she’s always so positive, even in the darkest days of the Blitz.

As I read, however, I found Vere Hodgson to be a contradictory person. At times, she’s delightfully childish about fruit, one of the hardest things to acquire during wartime in London (and all the more dear when they did become available). On the other hand, she’s remarkably astute about the goings-on in the world and at home. This is a paragraph that really struck me as poignant as I read:

[Sunday 11th May 1941] Just heard the terrible news that Westminster Hall was hit last night. Also the Abbey and the Houses of Parliament. They saved the roof to a large extent. In the Abbey it was the Lantern. At first they thought Big Ben had crashed! One cannot comment on such things. I feel we must have sinned grievously as a nation to have such sacrifices demanded of us. Indeed future generations will say we have not taken care of what was handed down to us. We should have been more careful to defend it. We must pay the price now; but it is terrible to think of the wasted years, when, sunk in enjoyment, we did not realize that the days of all we looked on s precious were numbered—that our rulers and ourselves had lost their way in a mist of false high thinking, and common sense had gone.

I think it’s amazing how people during the war adapted so quickly, making do with what was available. But on the other hand, it seems as though Londoners were, in an odd way, better off than many! I think it’s interesting about the bombing aspect; because London was so large, you could only see or hear the bombs that were falling in your area! ( )