Nella Last's Peace

It was wonderful to pick up from where I left off at the end of Nella Last's War - VJ Day August 14th, 1945 - when I opened the pages of Nella Last's Peace. There was something very comforting about the continuation, so I didn't feel as if I'd missed any of Nella's little world and life in Barrow and the goings on with her family and friends.

You can expect more of the same wonderful prose (expertly edited) and humourous, gossipy, emotive and reflective insights, observations, thoughts, feelings and interactions as Nella shares her life with us. The war might well be over, but the fight to establish a positioning in the new world and the battle for housewives to provide for their families despite rationing, rages on. Life is still hard and Nella often reflects on the camaraderie of the war years and how it kept them all going.

What I love about Nella's writing is that she is brutally honest in her diary entries and she seems ultra sensitive to the happenings of everyday life.

Two beautiful quotes to illustrate this:

"We are all in the melting pot of history, and that's always hurting. The best part of history is to read it out of books when things get more in focus..."

"It's so ghastly to think that people who fight, endure and suffer are not the ones to begin wars, and are so helpless to stop them. Only if people's minds and hearts could unite and change, only if we all could unite in a single purpose of personal responsibility to each other, to life in general, towards people we know exist but never see, to teach little children the beauty of peace and concord, how to agree with each other, share things - and laugh - can simple forthright peace come."

When I got to the end, I felt like I'd lost an old friend, a very dear, wise old friend. So imagine my delight when I discovered there's a third and final installment of Nella's diary entries written through the 1950s.

Guess what I've just ordered on Amazon...