Diary of a Wartime Affair
Page 33
How full the barn that holds the garnered sheaves!
Doreen herself died in 1994, aged eighty-seven.
We [‘the twins’] knew that our mother Doreen had written a diary throughout most of her adult life, and she had told us we could read it after her death. On doing so, we, together with Doreen’s sister Margot [M], found it so interesting that it seemed publishable. The original version for 1934–41 is about three times longer than the version published here, which is edited to be more manageable. In addition, Doreen continued to write a fairly full diary until the mid-1950s, and a sparser diary for much longer. Doreen also contributed a diary to Mass Observation intermittently from September 1940 to November 1944, which is a shortened version of her personal diary.
Acknowledgements
We should first like to acknowledge the work of Doreen’s late sister, Margot, who began the long process of transcribing Doreen’s diary after her death. She was assisted in learning how to use a computer for this purpose by a friend, Hywel Davies.
Between September 1940 and November 1944 Doreen submitted an abridged version of her diary to Mass Observation, whose archive is now at Sussex University. The current archivist, Fiona Courage, has been most helpful to us and to enquirers interested in exploring the Mass Observation entries of ‘Diarist 5245’.
We are grateful to social historian Tanya Evans for her encouragement and help in getting the diary published. She originally discovered Doreen as a diarist through the Mass Observation Archive.
Eleo Gordon, our editor at Penguin, has been an invaluable source of encouragement and knowledge as we have proceeded with the publication process. She has made the whole enterprise a great pleasure.
Finally, we’d like to thank Serena Esiri-Bloom (one of Doreen’s great-granddaughters) for her help with organizing and digitally scanning the family photos.
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PENGUIN BOOKS
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Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
First published 2016
Copyright © Margaret Esiri and Andrew Evans, 2016
The moral right of the copyright holders has been asserted
Cover images: couple © Topfoto; landscape © Shutterstock.
ISBN: 978-0-241-25007-5
1934
* The tax office boss.
† Association of Inspectors of Tax.
* E’s wife, Kathleen.
* Paternal aunts.
† Her piano teacher.
* Elsie Evans, E’s sister.
* Roy was D’s first cousin and Marjorie was his wife.
* Elsie Fisher, a friend from college days.
† Doreen’s mother.
* E and Doreen were doing a course in psychology.
* A former colleague, who had remained a friend.
* An account for herself of the achievements and shortcomings of the year.
* A wedding ring, purchased at Woolworths.
* Paternal uncle.
† Another paternal aunt.
‡ A clerk at the office.
* His niece and nephew.
* She was probably afraid she was pregnant.
1935
* She was to be the speaker at a reunion of history graduates from Royal Holloway College.
* Her university history professor.
† A friend from college days.
‡ Nickname for a history lecturer.
* The conductor.
* Menstruation.
* Nickname for Goldstein, new Inspector in Charge.
* Against the decision not to promote him to Higher Grade.
* Doreen Hosier.
* Her favourite paternal aunt.
† Neighbours.
‡ Another friend from college days.
* Senior Inspector, one rung above Higher Grade in the promotions hierarchy.
* A friend from childhood.
1936
* A German business associate of her father’s.
1937
* Doreen’s Budget Statements were end-of-year accounts of the state of her life as she conceived it at that point.
* E’s sister.
* By Richard Church, a former colleague of E’s.
* She is referring to a blissful week’s holiday in Shropshire with E, taken in September 1934 and mentioned in her diary entry for 13 September of that year.
* A friend from college days.
* Mass Observation is an organization founded in 1937 and launched by Tom Harrison and two colleagues at the New Statesman. It invited members of the general public to send in information about their everyday lives and also developed a National Panel of Diarists, of whom Doreen was one.
1938
* Paternal uncle.
* Rosa’s sister.
* A fellow woman tax inspector.
1939
* E’s nephew.
* Their dog, sometimes referred to as ‘S’.
* Special examination of her work, in preparation for being considered for promotion to the Higher Grade.
1940
* Excess purchase tax.
* Her boss at her new office.
* She is referring to her attempt to become pregnant.
* Edward Salmon.
1941
* Seven Pillars of Wisdom, by T. E. Lawrence.
* Chief Inspector and head of the Board of Inland Revenue for Northern Ireland.
* Ministry of Information.
* Vera Hobday was the person Margot had found to be a nanny. Her husband was in the army and was to visit from time to time when on leave.
* Doreen planned to formally adopt the babies, as she was an unmarried mother.