'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.'
Industry Reviews
'If you want to discover how to stay close when you're frightened and cut off from a loved one, Eileen Alexander's passionate, gossipy, vivacious outpourings show the way. Her letters tell a story of survival itself - and give voice to the urgency to connect in love in spite of every obstacle.'
Marina Warner
'Love in the Blitz provides an enchanting insight into a young woman's life in wartime Britain via letters sent by the 'blue-stocking' Eileen Alexander to friends, family, and most importantly, the love of her life.'
Jacqueline Winspear, New York Times bestselling author of the Maisie Dobbs series
'A remarkable aggregate of public and personal history. It begins with, per editor Crane, a "remarkably forgiving letter" from Alexander to Ellenbogen after she is badly injured in a car crash while he, a friend and fellow Cambridge student, is driving. The ensuing correspondence (of which his half is lost) traces their deepening bond, as he serves in the RAF and she in the Army bureaucracy, and shares details of ordinary British life during WWII, perhaps most dramatically of blitz-era London. "I've been nervous in Air-Raids before, but last night I was Terrified," Alexander writes, noting elsewhere, "gas-mask practice is at 10 and I've left my mask at home again." She also shares "libelous" gossip about her friends ("Darling Jean Swills Pink Gin with Terrific Swagger-It's my private opinion that she's a bit of a Wild Oat") and describes familial roadblocks to their relationship, as when her parents are scandalized by her plans to stay with Ellenbogen near his training camp. Any reader with an interest in cultural history or a love of romance will find this a book to savour'
Publishers Weekly, starred review
