Love and War in London

Olivia Cockett

Description

Olivia Cockett was twenty-six years old in the summer of 1939 when she responded to an invitation from Mass Observation to “ordinary” individuals to keep a diary of their everyday lives, attitudes, feelings, and social relations. This book is an annotated, unabridged edition of her candid and evocative diary.

Love and War in London: A Woman’s Diary 1939-1942 is rooted in the extraordinary milieu of wartime London. Vibrant and engaging, Olivia’s diary reveals her frustrations, fears, pleasures, and self-doubts. She records her mood swings and tries to understand them, and speaks of her lover (a married man) and the intense relationship they have. As she and her friends and family in New Scotland Yard are swept up by the momentous events of another European war, she vividly reports on what she sees and hears in her daily life.

Hers is a diary that brings together the personal and the public. It permits us to understand how one intelligent, imaginative woman struggled to make sense of her life, as the city in which she lived was drawn into the turmoil of a catastrophic war.

Sujets

• Love
• Love (disambiguation)
• History

Informations

• Publié par: Wilfrid Laurier University Press
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 2006
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781554581085
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

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LOVE&WAR
IN LONDON
A Wo m a n’sd i a r y
1939–1942
olivia cockett

edited byrobert w.malcolmson

Love & Warin london
A Woman’s Diary1939–1942
by Olivia Cockett

Edited by Robert Malcolmson

Life Writing Series

In theLife Writing Seri e ,sPry s ese ivitrseirunU rir faL d i lW silefuplbsieh
w ri ti gn a nd new life-wri ti gn cri itcism in order to promote a u t o b i o g r- a p h i
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a nd men whose politi c all,i t erry,aor philosophical purposes are central t o
their live s.Life Writi n gf e taures the accounts of ordinary people, w ri t t e n
in Eng l i s ho r, t r a n st el da into English from French or the languages of the
Fi rst Nations or from a ny of the languages of immigration to Cana da .Li f e
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i ng, as long as they are not limited to one a uhtor or t e x. t
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M a n u si pct rs of social ,c u lt u r aln,d hist o ri cl - dsia erc notst htainterea
ered for the seri e,sbut are not publishe d, are mai natined in theLife
Writing ArchiverarbiL y.yurier Unive rsit oWf i l fir daL

Series Editor
Marlene Kadar
Humanities Division, York University

Manuscripts to be sent to
Brian Henderson, Director
Wilfrid Laurier University Press
75 University Avenue West
Waterloo, Ontario, CanadaN2L3C5

Love & Warin london
A Woman’s Diary1939–1942
by Olivia Cockett

Edited by Robert Malcolmson

We acknowledge the support of the Cana da Council for the A rts for our publishing
p r o g r a mW e. acknowledge the fi na n c li saupport of the Gove rnment of Cana da
through the Book Publishing Ind u styrDevelopment Program for our publishing
a ctivi ti e.sWe acknowledge the Gove rnment of Ontario through the Ontario Media
D evelopment Corporati o ’ns Ontario Book Initi ative .

L i brya and A r c hveis Cana da Catal o gu ignin Publicati o n

C o c k ,eOt tlvii a ,1912–19 98

L ove a nd war in London : a w o m a’sndiary,19 39–1942 /by Olivia Cockett ;
edited by Robert Mal c o l m s.o n

( LifeW ri tignSeri es)
Includes ind e x .
isbn 0-8 8 902-4 58-6

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C over a nd text design by P.J.Wo o d l ad .nC over pa s s p t op rhotograph of Olivia
Cockett as a yo u gn woman courtesy of Hilary Munday ;c over photograph of Wat e r l o o
S tation courtesy of the Imperi al War Museum (no.d2 791) .

E veyr reasonable effort has been made to acquire perm i siosn for copyright mat e rila
used in this t e x, ta nd to acknowledge all such indebtedness a c c u r ayt.eAlny err osr
a nd omissions called to the publishe r’s at t e in otn will be corr e tced in future pri n -t
i ngs.

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P rinted in Cana da

No part of this publication may be reproduced,stored in a retri eval system or t r a -n s
m i t t ,e idn a ny form or by a ny means,w i thout the prior w ritten consent of the
p u b l ie rs hlia r oian anadrighCopy erfeccnehC moT y nccc(As espyCoiL tsnecgn iegA
ri g h t )F o.r an Access Copyright licence,vi sit w w w. a c c e s ysr ic go hp.cta or call t o l l
free to1-8 00-8 93-5 77.

“The emotional life … is the core and essence of human
life. The intellect arises out of it, is rooted in it, draws
its nourishment and sustenance from it, and is the
subordinate partner in the human economy.”
—John Macmurray,Reason and Emotion

X X X

“A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses
that moment of experience from which to look back or
from which to look ahead.”
— GrahamGreene,The End of the Affair

Contents

Illustrations ix
Preface xi
A Note on Sources
Introduction1

xv

The Diary
IWar in Name Only9
October1939–April1940
I IReal Wa r7 5
June–August1940
I I IpoH dna, rof gni s ebiBae n s s B,sys uo B b m 13 9
September1940–October1942

Epilogue191
Appendix19 9
Index2 0 3

vii

Illustrations

Olivia Cockett as a child/9
Olivia Cockett’s London,19 39–19 40(map) /10
Waterloo Station in19 41/2 2
Bill Hole in19 3 8/40
Olivia Cockett as a young woman/7 5
“The Cut” market in19 3 8/12 7
Olivia Cockett’s passport photo,1931/13 9
Damaged houses on Breakspears Road,40– 19 4191 /144–4 5
Rene Willmott at3 3Breakspears Road, November19 4 2/14 7
Olivia Cockett in her mid-thirties/191

ix

Preface

The central source for this book is the World WarT w o
d i ray of Olivia Cockett, who was born in1912a nd grew up a nd lived in
L o nd o. Sn he wrote this diary for the research organization Mass-O b s -e r
vation (m-o)—its work is discussed below, mainly in the introduction
and appendix—and the original manuscript is preser ved in the
MassObservation Archive at the University of Sussex. Olivia Cockett started
her diary inAugust1939,continued with it for much of1940,wrote
o n yl irr e gu l ayr i ln 1419 dn a19 4 2a,ti dnoc dn edne ilyOcn uscle ivr t o b e
1942,when she turned thirty. In addition to her diary, she also
sentmo“Directive Replies.” These were her responses toa number ofm-o’s
m o n thy, ls o m ie mtes open- e nded questi o n anires to its volunteer
parti c i pa ,n tw shich were referred to as “D i r tei vce s.”Her responses to the s e
Directives are linked to her diary at appropriate places.
Olivia Cockettalso kept private journals—veryal (onethree in tot
s h ot)r—held by her niec,e H i lra yuMdnto m l A.yahw hci era asll of the s e
w ri tigns predate late4019 . Whe n veer this mat e rilais referred to below,
it is clear ly disti ngu i s ehd from the mat e ril ain the Mass-Observati o n
Archive.
I have also offered a number of extracts from other diari sts wh o
were w ri tignin4019 –41,a nd whose comments a nd observations a b o u t
wartime Eng l a dn can be connected t o,a nd a m p l ,i ft hyose of Olivi a
C o c k .eTthte words of these other diari st,sall of them w o m e, anre found
mainly at two points in the diary: February1940and September1940.
Quotations from other contemporary sources, such as newspapers and
J.B. Priestley’sPostscripts(1940), help on occasion to clarify or enlarge
upon matters mentioned by Olivia Cockett herself.
The following text represents a complete a nd una birdged t r a n s c- ri p
tion of Olivia Cockett’s diary- wri tignforMass-Observation between
O ctober19 3 9a nd October19 4.2While she sometimes typed her diary,
it is mostly handwritten, and her script is not always easy to decipher.
Her w ri ti gn,th o u g ihs ,lar g ey lfree of err o sr a nd obscuri ti e, sfor she

xi

xii

|

Preface

valued highly clear, precise prose. However, almost any personal diary
(diaries are often composed in haste) includes a few obvious mistakes,
such as a typo or a word missing a letter, and when these occur I have
made corr e tcions si l e ny .t lMy main interve n itons have related to
punct uati o ,npar a g r a p gh, ic na p ail ti z tia o ,na nd consi stency in usage.M o ts
p e rs o aln diaries ar e,in some respect s,p u n cta tued w h i m si cy ,ala lnd
Olivia’s diary is no exception. She also capitalized a lot of wordsthat
would now not be capitalized (e.g., “News”), and a few words, such as
“War ”, were sometimes capital i z e, sdo m iemtes not. S m lal numbers (l e s s
than10) were on some occasions written as words, on other occasions
as numeral s. My editori al goal on all such mat t esrhas been consi
stency a nd clari t.yTh u,sforexample, s m lal numbers are consi st e nyt l
presented as words except when they refer to clock time. I have not in
any way tampered with the substance of Olivia Cockett’swritings or
deliberately omitted any words from herm-odiary during these three
years. Her “Directive Replies,” by contrast, have been used selectively,
d e p e ndg iontheir relevance to the diary, as have her private diaries a nd
other personal papers not in the Mass-Observation Archive.
England during the Second World War had a pre-decimal currency,
of which only the pound ste r lgi (n£) still exists. There were t w e n t y
s h i l lg is inone pound (20s = £1ce i pene shn ondnt ) al evw e illi( gn12d =
1s). In19 3 9Olivia Cockett’s annual salary was£160—that is, about£3
1s per w e ke—a nd s