nation change so quickly from a war mentality to a peace mentality,’ observed the diplomat-turned-writer Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart near the end of May 1945. ‘The war [ie that was continuing in the Far East and was expected to last well into 1946] has disappeared from the news . . . Sport and the election now fill the front pages.’ Sport included what was still the national game, and on 22 May the First ‘Victory’ Test ended at Lord’s with Australia pummelling an ageing England attack to win by six wickets. For Gladys Langford there was a rare treat that day, in the company of Mr Burchell, a fellow-resident at her hotel: ‘He took me first to the Saviours’ Arms at Westminster where we had a substantial lunch – then we tried to get into a cinema but there were queues everywhere. We finally went to the Polytechnic after which, queues being in evidence, everywhere, we had fish & chips in a Soho “dive” where coloured men [probably American servicemen] were much in evidence. To be taken out at 55 is quite a triumph.’ Anyone who had imagined that life would suddenly become easier in that first summer of peace was swiftly disabused. Judy Haines, however, took it all in her stride:
16 May . Mother and Dad H. came to tea. Abbé [her husband, whose real name was Alfred] made the jelly and blancmange. Mother played and I sang – for 2 hours. The husbands seemed very happy about it. Then we became engrossed in KANUGO [a card game], till nearly 11 o’clock. Very satisfactory evening.
19 May . As usual at holiday time [the Whit weekend], queues everywhere in Chingford . . . The bread queue was the longest I have ever seen, and think many were disappointed. We had just about sufficient, and I have always Ryvita to help out.
26 May . Cleared out tallboy. Listened to Pride & Prejudice . The ration this week, of chops, contained some suet. Good! Chopped it and wrapped it in flour for future suet pudding.
For Henry St John, working a few days later in Midsomer Norton, there was as ever only frustration – ‘I tried in vain to buy some Ovaltine, this being the 11th successive shop at which I failed to get it, although it continues to be widely advertised’ – but there was some compensation when, on the train back to Bristol, an American soldier gave him a Camel cigarette. The American influence, and indeed anything that smacked of the modern, did not play well with Ernest Loftus in Essex. ‘Mrs Williams [the French mistress] and I are taking joint action to stop our scholars attending Youth Clubs or, as I call them, Child Night Clubs,’ noted Barking Abbey School’s head in early June. ‘So far as our type of school is concerned they are a menace. The world is sex-mad & they are the outcome of the sex-urge + the war + the cinema + evil books + a debased art & music + an uneducated parentage.’ 1.
For one American, the writer Edmund Wilson, the experience of arriving in London later in June and putting up at the Green Park Hotel in Half Moon Street proved a salutary revelation of the Old World’s post-bellum bleakness:
I was given a little room with yellow walls rubbed by greasy heads above the bed – little daybed with horrible brown cover that seemed to be impregnated with dirt – wooden washstand with no towel – brown carpet with rhomboidal pattern, stained and full of dust – piles of dirt in plain sight in corners – small shit-colored coal grate with dismal gas logs in corner. The dining room, with slovenly wretched waitresses – stains of soup, eggs, and jam on the table that seemed never to have been wiped off.
None of this, though, pierced Wilson’s heart. But for Surrey’s scholar-naturalist Eric Parker, driving through ‘the Fold Country’ (between Blackdown and Godalming) on the last day of May to see what had happened to his county’s favourite corner since he had last been there in 1940, it was very different. ‘The Fold Country was an aerodrome,’ he
16 May . Mother and Dad H. came to tea. Abbé [her husband, whose real name was Alfred] made the jelly and blancmange. Mother played and I sang – for 2 hours. The husbands seemed very happy about it. Then we became engrossed in KANUGO [a card game], till nearly 11 o’clock. Very satisfactory evening.
19 May . As usual at holiday time [the Whit weekend], queues everywhere in Chingford . . . The bread queue was the longest I have ever seen, and think many were disappointed. We had just about sufficient, and I have always Ryvita to help out.
26 May . Cleared out tallboy. Listened to Pride & Prejudice . The ration this week, of chops, contained some suet. Good! Chopped it and wrapped it in flour for future suet pudding.
For Henry St John, working a few days later in Midsomer Norton, there was as ever only frustration – ‘I tried in vain to buy some Ovaltine, this being the 11th successive shop at which I failed to get it, although it continues to be widely advertised’ – but there was some compensation when, on the train back to Bristol, an American soldier gave him a Camel cigarette. The American influence, and indeed anything that smacked of the modern, did not play well with Ernest Loftus in Essex. ‘Mrs Williams [the French mistress] and I are taking joint action to stop our scholars attending Youth Clubs or, as I call them, Child Night Clubs,’ noted Barking Abbey School’s head in early June. ‘So far as our type of school is concerned they are a menace. The world is sex-mad & they are the outcome of the sex-urge + the war + the cinema + evil books + a debased art & music + an uneducated parentage.’ 1.
For one American, the writer Edmund Wilson, the experience of arriving in London later in June and putting up at the Green Park Hotel in Half Moon Street proved a salutary revelation of the Old World’s post-bellum bleakness:
I was given a little room with yellow walls rubbed by greasy heads above the bed – little daybed with horrible brown cover that seemed to be impregnated with dirt – wooden washstand with no towel – brown carpet with rhomboidal pattern, stained and full of dust – piles of dirt in plain sight in corners – small shit-colored coal grate with dismal gas logs in corner. The dining room, with slovenly wretched waitresses – stains of soup, eggs, and jam on the table that seemed never to have been wiped off.
None of this, though, pierced Wilson’s heart. But for Surrey’s scholar-naturalist Eric Parker, driving through ‘the Fold Country’ (between Blackdown and Godalming) on the last day of May to see what had happened to his county’s favourite corner since he had last been there in 1940, it was very different. ‘The Fold Country was an aerodrome,’ he
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