2. A brief encounter with reading on the home front

Available for over a year

As the BBC marks the 80th anniversary of VE Day, Professor Emma Smith uncovers five unexpected stories about how World War Two changed books, publishing and reading forever. Emma sets off on both imaginary and real journeys to Milford, Nottingham, Cambridge and London to discover the truth about civilian wartime reading. Her plan is to discover which books Laura Jesson, the fictional heroine of that most iconic of 1940s British films, Brief Encounter, might have been been carrying in her basket as she returned from a wartime visit to Boots Book-Lovers’ Library. Would it have been one of the cosy volumes recommended by Mrs Neville Chamberlain in The Brighter Blackout Book, or something altogether racier, such as Kathleen Winsor’s 1944 historical romance, Forever Amber? With contributions from Judith Wright and Nicola Wilson. Produced for Just Radio by Beaty Rubens