Home Fires Burning: The Great War Diaries of Georgina Lee

by Georgina Lee, Hew Strachan (Foreword), Gavin Roynon (Editor)

Written for her baby son, Georgina Lee’s diaries offer a comprehensive, day-by-day account of the First World War on the British Home Front. From the panic of August 1914 to the euphoria of 1919, Mrs. Lee faithfully recorded the war's impact on civilian life, from the rush to hoard food and stock-market mayhem to conscription and air raids.

Genres: World War I

307 pages, Hardcover

First published December 30, 2006

About the author

Georgina Lee enjoys all things about space. When she's not watching something spacey on television, she's writing about some distant world. Her characters are unique, fresh and yet very real. Georgina Lee is the pen name for Barbara Phinney when she is writing sci-fi fantasy. You can find her on Twitter as @BarbaraPhinney.

Reviews

[Louise Culmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Georgina Lee wrote her wartime diary for her infant son Harry, who was less than a year old when the war started. She hoped it would interest him to read it when he was old enough. She writes detailed accounts of the progress of the war, mixed with her own personal experience of life on the Home Front. Coming from a comfortably off upper middle class family, she has to cope with, for instance, a reduced number of servants, and at one point actually has to carry the shopping home herself! And again, when the nanny is on her honeymoon, she finds herself in sole charge of Harry for a short period. How will she survive such hardship? Well, she manages to cope. Her descriptions of bombing raids by Zeppelins are fascinating - overshadowed by stories of the Blitz from WW2, one tends to forget how heavily London and other towns were bombed during WW1. Her work with Belgian refugees is very interesting too. This is a very good book for anyone interested in life in England during WW1.

[Ruth Bryant · Rating 4 out of 5]

I came across this book by chance after parts were read during a televised commemoration service for the anniversary of the start of WW1. I really enjoyed the insight of the author's experiences of life during the war as written to her son and it showed how no part of society was exempt from the brutal reality of the conflict.