Love in the Blitz : the greatest lost love letters of the Second World War

‘Her voice is absolutely, beguilingly conversational … Intelligent, allusive, iconoclastic, captivatingly intense … This is the news from the domestic frontline: personal, unique, unexpurgated, without propaganda, as it unfolded and was experienced … Splendid’William Boyd, Guardian With the intimacy and wit of a Second World War Bridget Jones, Eileen Alexander offers a portal into life during the Blitz. Eileen Alexander fell in love amidst the falling of bombs, finding a quotation from poetry at every turn.

Graduating from Cambridge in 1939, she had just been injured in a car crash (the man she had a soft spot for was driving) and had firm ambitions of studying further, making herself useful and absolutely not getting married. Her letters offer a love story and a unique snapshot of the home front, as well as resurrecting the voice of a profoundly funny writer. ‘I wonder what anyone would think if they suddenly came across my letters to you & started reading them in chronological order?’ Eileen wrote in 1941. ‘I think they’d say “This girl never lived till she loved” – and it would be true, darling.’