Love and War in London: A Woman's Diary, 1939–1942

Naomi Brun is a freelance writer and a book reviewer for The Hamilton
Spectator.

The 1930s were a time of great unrest in Britain. Economic hardship,
changing social mores, and a looming war all signalled that a new era
was beginning. In order to better understand these new developments and
their impact on the British people, an organization called
Mass-Observation invited people to write journals and send them in for
analysis. Taking an anthropological view, Mass-Observation wanted
correspondents to reflect on themselves, their society, and world
events.

One correspondent, Olivia Cockett, shares her private and
Mass-Observation journals in Love and War in London. Cockett was a
government worker in her late 20s at the time of the writings and, due
to both her position and her sensitive nature, her journals offer a
great deal of insight into London life at the onset of World War II. Her
anecdotes reveal what the war did to those around her. The men in her
office dehumanized their German enemies in order to make necessary war
activities easier to bear; her family and friends embraced duty as the
most honourable of virtues; and she herself found great therapeutic
relief in the “Victory Gardens” the British were encouraged to grow.


Like many other Mass-Observation writers, Cockett also kept her own
private journal. Cockett became involved with a married co-worker and
had a 12-year relationship with him before discovering that he would not
be granted a divorce. Her private writings, as a direct result, contain
much reflection about the social constraints of the age.

Love and War in London allows 21st-century readers to see wartime
London through the eyes of a perceptive soul.