And Life Goes on

Life in London begins for Patricia R. Carpenter M.B.E. with the memory of crouching under a table top shelter while air raid sirens blare out their warning.

Her world is one of red Mickey Mouse gas masks and her mother dashing to the shops on roller skates with the pram because they can't afford the bus. When peace resumes, the urban landscape of smog and shortages is exchanged for the wide spaces of Kempsford in Gloucestershire.

This is a place where mains electricity becomes a distant memory, water has to be fetched from the well and children are expected to help on the land before going to school. With additional chapters featuring her parents' life in service to the gentry and her own coming of age in the country, And Life Goes On is a beautifully personal account of growing up in wartime Britain.