Nella Last’s War: The Second World War Diaries of Housewife, 49

by: Richard Broad and Suzie Fleming, Editors

Published by: Profile Books

Reviewed by Julie Failla Earhart
“In September 1939, Nella Last, a middle-aged housewife (with two grown sons) living in Barrow-in Furness (England), began a diary for Mass-Observation that she continued to write avidly for nearly thirty years.”

Nella Last wrote more than two million words about life in England between 1939 and 1945, documenting daily life in a shipyard town. Richard Broad and Suzie Fleming edited that extensive collection into a 298-page book simply titled Nella Last’s War. The entries begin on September 3, 1939, two days after the Germans marched into Poland and end as peace with Japan is announced on August 13, 1945. The first entry is marked, “Housewife, 49,” Nella’s occupation and age.

Before I read this remarkable account, I knew little of daily life in England during the war. I didn’t know that individuals could purchase indoor bomb shelters to assemble in their homes. I had always pictured the English crouch in dank, hastily dug shelters where dirt sieved from overhead as German planes flew low, pounding the British Isle with their deadly cargos.

Nella wasn’t a woman to sit by and watch the world spin out of control. She worked at the Canteen, feeding soldiers; at the Red Cross Shoppe to raise funds for P.O.W. parcels; and at the Centre to raise money for the war effort.

Nella, like all the women of that time, had to step out of their protected, passive roles. Many women like Nella found the war experiences liberating. Along with the change in women’s attitudes, the accounts that Nella provides illustrates the consequences of rationing, the re-established priorities, and the slowness of receiving news reports.

Also before I read Nella’s diary, I had never hard of England’s Mass-Observation project that began in 1937. Nella was “one of five hundred people who chose to be part of this remarkable national writing project.”

Nella Last’s War is a timeless memoir to the struggles faced by the English people during World War Two. It’s also a monument to the character of women like Nella, who in their individual ways, changed the path women followed forever.

Armchair Interviews says: One woman’s powerful telling of her personal story.