Wartime Summer True Stories of Love, Life and Loss on the British Home Front

We take summer holidays for granted but, back in the 1940s, the picture was very different. War had gripped Britain. Wave after wave of bombs fell, beaches were closed off, and petrol was rationed by the forbidding question, 'Is your journey really necessary?' But the summer days (with double summer time) seemed to go on forever, war or no war - and British families were determined to make the best of their paralyzed country. For evacuated children, this meant freedom that is unimaginable today: wandering at will, discovering wildlife in fields and ponds, foraging from orchards and hedgerows and swimming in the streams. Elsewhere, country estates were requisitioned for the war efforts, the tennis courts given over for training and the Lord and Lady of the manor sent packing! Dances attracted people from all walks of life - from ballroom dances to the thrill of the arrival of the GIs and the jitterbug. But the shadow of war was never far away; the evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940, and the D-Day Landings in 1944 took place in June - with unreliable summer weather playing a part in both.

Caroline Taggart worked in publishing as an editor of popular non-fiction for 30 years before being asked by Michael O'Mara Books to write I USED TO KNOW THAT, which became a Sunday Times bestseller. Following that she co-wrote MY GRAMMAR AND I (OR SHOULD THAT BE 'ME'?) As a result of these books and HER LADYSHIP'S GUIDE TO THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH, published by Batsford, she has appeared frequently on BBC Breakfast and on national and regional radio, talking about language, grammar and Pythagoras's theorem. Her record is 16 radio interviews in one day on the subject of exclamation marks.