An interesting book which gives a first hand account of life during World War 2. Although I liked the idea of the book I am afraid I found it really hard going and very disjointed to read.

I have long been interested in the history of the Second World War, particularly the viewpoint of the home front and was therefore really pleased to have the opportunity to read this collection of letters from Eileen Alexander to her fiancé Gershon Ellenbogen. They were separated for much of the war and the letters give a great sense of how much they loved each other as well as of daily life in England.

I did find it hard to keep track of some of the characters (the summary at the end might have been quite useful to have at the beginning of the volume in a shorter format) but what I enjoyed most was getting to know Eileen. Her character comes across so strongly in her letters to the point that I really do feel that I met her. I also found it absolutely fascinating how frank she was about sex and relationships - some of her letters were truly surprising in that sense.

Overall, I would recommend this book, particularly if you’re interested in this period or enjoy reading real life correspondence. I only wish that Gershon’s letters still existed. But the implication is that there are further letters from Eileen that could still be published - do I sense a volume 2?

With thanks to #Netgalley, #4thestatebooks and ~wmcollinsbooks for a pre-publication copy.
Love in the Blitz
‘It’s natural for me to express myself in letters. Almost it’s my metier,..’ writes Eileen Alexander to her ‘solace’ Gershon Ellenbogen and, as these letters reveal, it is absolutely her ‘metier’. In another letter Eileen talks about about ‘the Art of letter writing’ with Mr Goodman who commented 'that the test of a good letter was that it should be interesting to a reader who knew neither the writer nor the recipient’.. Eileen’s letters certainly pass that test. I think that there is probably an art to reading letters too. Although at one point Eileen’s brother comments that ‘one would think you were writing for future publication’, these letters were written for one person only, Gershon. Any reader of this collection is a privileged audience. Necessarily some letters are more interesting than others, written with different moods and energies.They are both a record of a deep and enduring love and a social history of one of Britain’s bleakest times. The letters provide Incredible detail of the minutia of daily life - for example about meals eaten, nights out. about clothing, - ‘pinkish-mauve silk dress with white sprigs on it and a black straw hat with yards of veiling,’- and wartime adjustments - ‘instead of icing, they had a cake-cover decorated with white flowers’. The letters record lives lived through wartime as deadly bombs drop relentlessly around them. Eileen’s letters are deeply honest, intimate, she discusses her anticipation of a physical relationship with Gershon, how she has been reading books on ‘wantonness’ and thinking about what contraception they might use. Reading these letters at the time of coronavirus provided many parallels - enduring dark times with no prospect of an end, facing a powerful enemy and dreaming of good times when it’s all over - Eileen will ‘have my hair set twice a day and go abroad and sit in the sun in the most expensive bathing suit I can find...’The commentary threaded through the letters is timely and sensitively done providing additional context when needed. These letters are an incredible read on so many levels and provide such an intimate record of a young woman living at this time. As letter writing is a dying art and social history will be recorded in other media this is a reminder of a powerful form of human communication.

I loved the idea of this book but unfortunately the reality did not meet my expectations. I found it very hard going and not easy to read at all. Unfortunately I was disappointed.

So vidid, you can almost be there. Personal and intimate while also being universal and relatable. I've already recommended this one to my friends.

This collection of letters, written by Eileen to her love Gershon, covers the early years of their relationship: from the beginning of their courtship, through to their engagement, marriage and the birth of their first child. This period of time also happens to coincide with the outbreak of WW2; their circumstances and respective roles in the war effort dictate their separation and their relationship lives through the words that they exchange.

Eileen is an intelligent woman and utterly (almost smugly?) committed to Gershon and the life that they plan to build together. She is a woman of societal privilege and swings between having progressive and feminist outlooks (on matters of education and employment) to being incredibly subservient within the relationship she is establishing with Gershon (describing herself to him as “I’m only a rather negligible little cluck after all“ and giving him permission to sow his “wild oats” if he can’t manage his physical impulses during their separation)

I really liked that the letters were given a contextual pre-face during various points; it helped me to gain an understanding of what was shaping Eileen’s life at the point of her putting to paper.

However, this book is in need of a heavy edit: the office gossip, never ending “darlings”, recollections of multiple dinners/lunches across society, the constant description of herself as “clucking” and general “he said/she said” narrative doesn’t contribute towards an understanding of their relationship, the war effort or enriching the contextual detail of the time.

This was a slow read, but I think if it is approached as a piece of historical writing rather than a love story, it might be more enjoyable. Moreover, as it is a one-sided collection of letters, it is only Eileen’s perspective of their relationship at best; it would’ve been interesting to read Gershon’s thoughts in his responses.

I did enjoy this particular nugget of wisdom though: “Marriage is a crazy business ... you give away one half of your food so as to get the other half cooked”

Thank you to NetGalley and William Collins for the opportunity to review this book in advance of its release.

An interesting book. Eileen was a talented letter writer which gave insight into her life and love for Gershon. However apart from a few instances it is a very privileged life and she avoided many of the hardships that ordinary people would have suffered in the war.

As with othe reviewers I have found this book pretty hard going. Definitely an easy one to leave and come back to. The idea of it sounded lovely but it's pretty heavy going historically and not what I was expecting at all.

Thank you for letting me review this in exchange for an ARC.

I have started this book in time to review it for the 30th April publication date but have realised that it is not a book I would want to read straight through. Rather it is what I call a 'dipper'. I shall read all of the letters as I am a social historian who enjoys anything to do with the two world wars. So, on having read the interesting but overlong preface I have embarked on Eileen's story. And I am sure I shall enjoy it as she seems to be an entertaining correspondent with wit and cynicism in bounds; so three stars in anticipation. With thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

With thanks to Netgalley for allowing me to review this book.

I wish I could say that I enjoyed Love in the Blitz but I found that it was very long winded and I had to really work on finishing this book.

I have to confess I found these letters less engaging than I'd hoped: they're an excellent historical source but less interesting to a general audience. We only have one side of the correspondence and the letters might have benefited from more vigorous editing and annotations. Eileen is a very privileged person so while we do see her taking shelter in the Blitz this offers a sort of culturally-elite view, especially when it comes to hardship. It's interesting on how an intelligent and qualified woman is able to use the war as an opportunity to forge a life and career for herself away from her family a d marriage.

I basically found this book trite and did not enjoy it at all. I found it a long winded account of the author’s life and she comes across as unappreciative of what is happening around her and with a very self centred character. This did not depict the war situation generally although in a few places reference to life in the blitz was there. It was a hard going book to read and to me was sluggish. I found the characters unreal and could not relate to them at all.
I appreciate the literary appeal as it is well written by an intelligent lady but it lacks perzazz.

I really wanted to enjoy this book but I found it a little hard going at times. These letters written by an intelligent woman did not accurately reflect the majority of women's experiences in WW2 as she was more privileged than most. Maybe in it would be easier to read in a book format rather than on a kindle with a glossary where you could refer to the numerous people in the book.

Although I liked this book, I found it rather a difficult read if I'm honest.

I found the descriptions of life, and the prevailing views in society, at that time interesting. However I found it quite hard to keep the large cast of characters in my head, and wasn't even sure who some of them were at times.

I've read this as a pre-publication copy in e-book format. Perhaps a later edition could include a few notes and references to help explain who everyone is etc?

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for an advance copy. All opinions my own.

This was a sweetly innocent peek at the love letters of an obviously brilliantly intelligent and sometimes verbose young woman. I was a little disappointed that there was little to indicate Gershon’s wartime experiences in her letters unless that was an intentional editorial choice. It was a little startling that ear barely seemed to touch her emotionally beyond missing her beloved, but a practical and witty woman she most obviously was and as dedicated a lover as I have ever seen in a epistolary book .

Good but not startlingly noteworthy.

The contents of this book might be of interest to a wider readership than it is going to get, due to the title and marketing.

This is a compilation of letters from a young woman to her young man, mostly in wartime, and ordinarily that would relegate it to the “social document” or romance shelves. But Miss Alexander tells her beloved, Gershon Ellenbogen, all sorts of anecdotes from a social circle that included cabinet ministers, senior military officers and captains of industry, as well as important academic figures. Having got a first in English at Cambridge University, Miss Alexander has an endless supply of quotes (often very funny indeed), not only for her letters, but for everyday conversation. Although it was the air raid precautions minister, Sir John Anderson, rather than her studies, who supplied her with “shut that book, Mary and pay attention to the air-raid.”

She admires the Labour politician Arthur Greenwood, who “spoke for England” in September 1939 when urged to do so by Conservative backbencher Leo Amery. (Less publicly, it was Greenwood, too, who swung Churchill’s cabinet behind Churchill and fighting on after the disasters of 1940. Greenwood’s position being that Britain did not have any choice other than fighting on, because any deal done with Hitler at that stage would be hugely disadvantageous from the outset and very easily broken at any moment that suited the Nazis. As Vichy France soon found out, on both counts.)

Her first wartime job is to work as third PA (which she translates as “Public Adorer”) to the Secretary of State for War, Leslie Hore-Belisha, another historical figure who perhaps deserves more attention than he gets. There is an irony here, because the book opens with Miss Alexander in hospital recovering from a road traffic accident, in which Gershon was driving -and the law he fell foul of was probably introduced by Leslie when he was Transport Secretary.

She is less fond of Michael Foot, who was still a prominent politician in my own lifetime, with a habit of rubbing an awful lot of people up the wrong way but occasionally putting into words what the nation thought and felt, as at the outbreak of the Falklands War. When, as editor of the Evening Standard, Foot responds to the King of Denmark’s announcement that he and the Royal Family would all proudly wear the Star of David (in response to the German occupiers imposing this on Danish Jews), Miss Alexander is impressed and thinks that Foot’s call for the world to show their appreciation of the Jewish contribution to world culture, came from deep conviction.

She also makes friends with Orde and Lorna Wingate, telling Gershon that Captain Wingate is a genius who will either be court-martialled or promoted to general (in a later letter she substitutes “Field Marshal”) and that would equate with what many people expected of him at the time. But she also shows great empathy with Lorna Wingate, who shares her own anguish at not being with the man she loves, only it’s worse for Lorna because her man is famously leading prolonged operations deep behind Japanese lines. To study Miss Alexander’s social circle is to study history in the making, so this collection of letters is not just a love story.

To some in the 21st century, Miss Alexander’s standards of sexual conduct will seem antiquated if not absurd, but she sees a reality here: that women who try to exercise unusual sexual or social freedom are at risk of ending up in the hands of predatory men best described in modern idiom as “sociopaths”. This happens several times in her own 1940s social circle and I’ve known it to happen to several 21st century women of my acquaintance. Some of the abusive conduct she describes would be outrageous and indeed criminal, even now, and it might provide some food for thought. (Modern studies suggest that as many as 9% of the male population are sociopaths and that proportion is not inconsistent with the number of Miss Alexander’s female friends who come to grief.)

I really wanted to like this a lot more than I did, and it had some really lovely, charming moments. But it was much too long, needed a great deal more editing, and suffered at times from a lack of explanation.
It's difficult since we only see one side of the correspondence - I didn't much like Gershon at the start of the book, and it felt like Eileen was far too desperate for his love. But by the end I felt much sorrier for him, and for the unstoppable fawning of Eileen. I'm afraid I found Eileen a bit too much, and whilst I understood her feelings, her endless love for him and her pain at their separation during the war, she did go on just a little bit, and there were lots of times I didn't really like her.

But there are aspects of wartime life that the letters capture like no novel ever could, and I was interested in her working life, and the snippets of information about eating out, travelling around London, being on fire duty, were all fascinating.

Eileen Alexander graduated with a first in English from Cambridge and came from a well-connected, Jewish family, who moved from Egypt to England, shortly before the outbreak of WWII. Coincidentally, while going from Cambridge to London, to meet her family, she was involved in a car accident. The driver was Gershon Ellenbogan, the son of devoutly Jewish parents from Liverpool. That accident, in 1938, left Gershon – who was accused of dangerous driving - upset that he would be seen as reckless, and his defence of events led to a minor press story. More importantly, it turned a friendship into love.

Although we are lucky that these letters, from Eileen Alexander to Gershon, written from the period of the accident, throughout the war, have been saved; sadly, there are no replies from Gershon himself. Therefore, this is a little bit like hearing half of a telephone call, when you can only really guess at the response. Still, without doubt, these are a fascinating record of the time and Eileen was an interesting correspondent, who did her utmost to keep Gershon amused and involved in her life back in Britain. Obviously, being Jewish, she did feel some disquiet of events, but, only once does she admit to fear. Having admitted this, she puts such thoughts away and shows only bravery and humour throughout the coming years. This is no small action, especially when invasion looked very possible.

I am always drawn to books set around the time of WWII, and sources such as these letters, actually written during the time, really reflect what was happening and how people who were there, felt about events. I found this a fascinating read and am glad I read these, often very moving, letters. I received a copy of this book from the publisher, via NetGalley, for review.

I found this a really lovely read and privileged to be able to read these historical love letters from a past time. It was beautiful and inspirational. Thank you to netgalley for the copy of the book in exchange for a review.

This is a World War II memoir that came about when, following an impulse buy on eBay, David McGowan acquired a large quantity of War correspondence. Among this mixed lot were a series of love letters written by one Eileen Alexander to her boyfriend Gershon Ellenbogen during the Second World War. The letters (some 1400 of them) bring to life what it was like to live through those terrible years through Eileen’s eyes.

Eileen was extremely intelligent (a Cambridge student) and not without wit. In one letter she describes her facial features after a car accident - “My face is now fully exposed to the world and looks like the rear elevation of a baboon”!

Although there’s no question that I liked Eileen’s spirit, I found it difficult to relate to her in any other way, her sense of entitlement came across as arrogant at times. I did find some of the letters interesting, but at other times I became distracted, disinterested, and resorted to skimming through parts of it. I really wanted to love this book, and though it demonstrates the lost art of letter writing beautifully, unfortunately I found it hard going at times, and feel it would have benefited from some trimming.