Love Lessons: A Wartime Diary

By Joan Wyndham

Book Overview

On my way to the studio there was an air-raid. I ran into the brick shelter in the middle of the road. There were poor little Leonard and Agnes sitting on their suitcases, having lost their all.... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0316962511
• ISBN13: 9780316962513
• Release Date: January 1985
• Publisher: Little Brown & Co
• Length: 203 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Fascinating and funny wartime memoir

Joan Wyndham's colourful and enthralling wartime diary covers the period from August 1939 to May 1941. Not quite seventeen at the outbreak of war, she has been raised a good Catholic but is nevertheless eager to experience the sins of the flesh. She encounters a number of eccentric, bizarre and outrageous men before finally falling for glamorous, impossible Rupert. The story of her cheqeured sex life is interwoven with vivid and fascinatign descriptions of London bohemian life among artists, writers, actors and philosophers. Much of it is very funny, yet tragedy is never far away. For instance, there is a delightful description of dancing at the Cafe de Paris to Ken 'Snakehips' Johnson and his band, then a few chapters later comes the stark tragedy of the bombing of the Cafe, with Ken and all but one of his band killed. Joan's ups and downs with love, friends, family and food are vividly and charmingly described. The book ends with her joining the Wrens, you can read about her adventures as a Wren in the equally entrancing sequel to this book 'Love is Blue'.

This is a book that DEMANDS republishing

These are the diaries of a young girl (only 17 when the war starts) and her journey into adulthood. She becomes (or plays at being) a painter, joins the Bohemian art culture, is seduced by a variety of men and keeps this frank, funny, appalling journal. Read it - you may view your grandmother in a whole new light!