Sources for the pages on the WW2 home front and other material

From the webmaster

This group of pages grew out reactions to the first version of this website which was based on what my mother wrote about everyday life in her childhood in the early 20th century. Reactions were so positive with emails of thanks arriving from all over the world, that I succumbed to requests to extend the website with my own recollections of everyday life a generation later in London suburbia.

I have approached the task by asking myself as I go about my everyday life in the 21st century what I am seeing around me now that is different from what I saw and experienced in the 1940s and 50s - and accordingly what later generations might like to know more about. My emphasis has been on what living in those times was like, what people did, why they did it, their experiences and how they felt. So the resulting pages are specifically not a history book account of events or a manual for old equipment. Plenty of other sites fulfil these purposes.

To set the context for everday life in those times, I have included some factual information on some pages. This has involving me in numerous visits to museums, re-enactments, informal interviews and book and internet research.

Various papers and receipts kept by my father have added realism to the pages.

Additional information and photographs that have come in from numerous visitors to the website and my own family, many of whom lived through the same years as me or were reporting on what their parents or grandparents told them. All contributing individuals are acknowledged on the pages concerned.

A few pages are written in their entirety by volunteers sympathetic to the ethos of the site, and I am grateful to them.

My biography is on the contact page.

See also the sources for the pages on everyday life in the early 20th century

sources: early 20th century material sources: ww2 home front and other material contact
the webmaster/author/researcher/editor privacy policy