Between 1939 and 1945, the civilian population in Britain was exposed to the grim and dangerous realities of war to an unprecedented degree. Yet many remember those years as bringing fulfilment, a sense of adventure, even exhilaration, and found the common danger gave their lives a shape and purpose that they have been unable to recapture in peacetime. Others see the wartime as essentially a time of nothing more valiant than endurance, of "making do", a dismal episode of their lives remembered above all for its deprivations, restrictions and tedium. Yet others found that, while there was certainly intensity, it was to be found in the frustrations and disappointments they experienced, perhaps through an ambition being thwarted, a relationship abruptly severed, an education cut short, a childhood missed.This book gathers the personal stories of 35 people, drawn from all walks of life, and evokes as never before, the reality of life in Britain during the Second World War. Here is a uniquely personal portrait of a nation at war, with contemporary photographs, diaries, letters, poems, and other memorabilia belonging to the men and women whose wartime lives fill this absorbing book.