What do you think?
Rate this book
Love and War in London: A Woman’s Diary 1939-1942
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.
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
13 people are currently reading
137 people want to read
About the author
Olivia Cockett
2 booksOlivia Cockett was born on October 11, 1912 to a middle-class family in Brockley, a southeast neighborhood of London.
Cockett is known principally through the diaries that she wrote for the Mass Observation Project, an institution that devoted itself to cataloging the daily lives of Britons. She was 27 when she began writing for Mass Observation on the eve of the Second World War. Her diaries are exceptional for their clarity, inward searching, and honesty, revealing the daily stresses and joys of wartime life. She gives us a unique window into the interpersonal relationships that surrounded her, devoting as much writing to family, friends, and love as she does to the war. She defined herself not by her circumstances, but by relationships to those whom she cared for and the common pleasures of life.
Cockett's written account is all the more valuable for its quotidian detail. By providing a portrait of civilian life during conflict, it weaves a counterpoint to the clash of titans portrayed in many histories of war.
Cockett is known principally through the diaries that she wrote for the Mass Observation Project, an institution that devoted itself to cataloging the daily lives of Britons. She was 27 when she began writing for Mass Observation on the eve of the Second World War. Her diaries are exceptional for their clarity, inward searching, and honesty, revealing the daily stresses and joys of wartime life. She gives us a unique window into the interpersonal relationships that surrounded her, devoting as much writing to family, friends, and love as she does to the war. She defined herself not by her circumstances, but by relationships to those whom she cared for and the common pleasures of life.
Cockett's written account is all the more valuable for its quotidian detail. By providing a portrait of civilian life during conflict, it weaves a counterpoint to the clash of titans portrayed in many histories of war.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
March 6, 2025
"LOVE AND WAR IN LONDON: The Mass Observation Wartime Diary of Olivia Cockett" is a fascinating story about a remarkable woman who provides an interesting view of the home front in Great Britain between 1939 and 1942.
The Mass Observation (MO) Program began in Britain in the late 1930s in which members of the general public were invited to record their experiences and thoughts in diary form and share their diaries (via regular installments sent by post) with MO. The MO program, in turn, would solicit its members during the Second World War with questionnaires, seeking their views of the war, their changing or altered lifestyles because of the war, and the kind of postwar Britain they would like to see. These diaries and questionnaires are now part of the MO archives in Sussex, England.
The format of this book gives the reader ready access into the life of Olivia Cockett - who was working for New Scotland Yard when the war began in September 1939. She had, at this point, been a government employee for about 10 years. She was almost 27 years old, living with her parents, and in a relationship with a married man who was 17 years her senior (Bill Hole). In their case, the passion Olivia and Bill had for each other began the moment they first laid eyes on each other several years earlier. It was a POWERFUL AND IMMEDIATE sexual and emotional attraction they felt towards each other. As one can well imagine, it wasn't easy for them to arrange meetings.
As someone who keeps a diary himself, I was utterly fascinated with this book. Olivia Cockett was a woman who knew her own mind and was unafraid to speak plainly and truthfully about her own feelings and beliefs. [There are photos in the book of Olivia, Bill Hole, and of her neighborhood in wartime London.]
For anyone interested in understanding the home front aspect of everyday life during the Second World War, I highly recommend "Love and War in London." Besides, when you read a book like this, the past does not seem remote or dead. But living, vital, and real, knowing that Olivia Cockett and the people with whom she worked, associated, and lived were as alive and experiencing the joys and stresses of life as we now are --- albeit in an era very different than today.
The Mass Observation (MO) Program began in Britain in the late 1930s in which members of the general public were invited to record their experiences and thoughts in diary form and share their diaries (via regular installments sent by post) with MO. The MO program, in turn, would solicit its members during the Second World War with questionnaires, seeking their views of the war, their changing or altered lifestyles because of the war, and the kind of postwar Britain they would like to see. These diaries and questionnaires are now part of the MO archives in Sussex, England.
The format of this book gives the reader ready access into the life of Olivia Cockett - who was working for New Scotland Yard when the war began in September 1939. She had, at this point, been a government employee for about 10 years. She was almost 27 years old, living with her parents, and in a relationship with a married man who was 17 years her senior (Bill Hole). In their case, the passion Olivia and Bill had for each other began the moment they first laid eyes on each other several years earlier. It was a POWERFUL AND IMMEDIATE sexual and emotional attraction they felt towards each other. As one can well imagine, it wasn't easy for them to arrange meetings.
As someone who keeps a diary himself, I was utterly fascinated with this book. Olivia Cockett was a woman who knew her own mind and was unafraid to speak plainly and truthfully about her own feelings and beliefs. [There are photos in the book of Olivia, Bill Hole, and of her neighborhood in wartime London.]
For anyone interested in understanding the home front aspect of everyday life during the Second World War, I highly recommend "Love and War in London." Besides, when you read a book like this, the past does not seem remote or dead. But living, vital, and real, knowing that Olivia Cockett and the people with whom she worked, associated, and lived were as alive and experiencing the joys and stresses of life as we now are --- albeit in an era very different than today.
January 6, 2022
2.5 Stars
This is less about the war than it is about the ups and downs of her long term love affair with a married man. One of the least interesting Mass Observation diaries I've read.
This is less about the war than it is about the ups and downs of her long term love affair with a married man. One of the least interesting Mass Observation diaries I've read.
January 21, 2011
What was it like to live through the Blitz? As a young woman, Olivia Cockett chronicled her life in London between 1939 and 1942 for Mass Observation, an organization devoted to collecting the real stories of British citizens during wartime. Her writing, together with notes by editor Robert Malcolmson's, show us how Londoners became accustomed to things we look back on with astonishment: bombs in the garden, nightly air raids, rationing, and the constant threat of death. Olivia's revealing, introspective prose is an absorbing read and an excellent character study, perfect for writing research.
June 24, 2019
For research: unexpectedly moving, and yet more proof that there are no ordinary lives, or that behind every so-called ordinary person lies untold secrets, pleasures, and desires (fulfilled and frustrated). Also, newsflash (!): humans are complicated and contradictory, in wartime or in peacetime 🙂
May 26, 2021
A fabulous read and what an amazingly modern woman Olivia Cockett turned out to be.
June 21, 2024
I would’ve loved to have met her.
September 11, 2024
Interesting. The prewar section does give a view of a peaceful London. The section on the Blitz, which certainly included her area of London, is far more engaging.
February 3, 2011
This book focuses on the wartime diary of Olivia Cockett, which she wrote for Mass Observation. It is edited by Robert Malcolmson. Olivia was 26 when war broke out and is a singular young woman in that she had been working in a clerical position since she was 17 and having an affair since that age with a married man in his thirties, whom she met at work.
Olivia is a very intelligent young woman who read widely. She was not afraid to tackle authors such as James Joyce, T.S. Eliot and Bertrand Russell and preferred serious music to the light music she heard on the radio. Her liberal outlook on life is the opposite to the conventional outlook of her Man. Because they were unable to marry - even their attempt for him to obtain a divorce goes wrong - she has had two illegal abortions before the war.
She describes routine and unusual events of her life during the war concisely and without emotion or self-pity. Once I became used to her style of writing I found the book a fascinating insight into the life of an ordinary, yet, in many ways extraordinary, young Londoner during the war. I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in civilian life at that time.
Olivia is a very intelligent young woman who read widely. She was not afraid to tackle authors such as James Joyce, T.S. Eliot and Bertrand Russell and preferred serious music to the light music she heard on the radio. Her liberal outlook on life is the opposite to the conventional outlook of her Man. Because they were unable to marry - even their attempt for him to obtain a divorce goes wrong - she has had two illegal abortions before the war.
She describes routine and unusual events of her life during the war concisely and without emotion or self-pity. Once I became used to her style of writing I found the book a fascinating insight into the life of an ordinary, yet, in many ways extraordinary, young Londoner during the war. I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in civilian life at that time.
Read
February 15, 2016The diary of Olivia Cockett (misspelled above) which she agree to keep for Mass Observation that very British study which aimed to find out what Britons every day lives were really like. She was a Londoner who had a job with the Metropolitan Police, a lover who was married, and an inquiring mind. Great reader and believer in social reform. The diary is kept from 1939 to 1942 and there is excellent detail about living through the blitz. She was and wasn't an ordinary person and this short book is a great view into her life and the times she lived through-which is what all quality diaries deliver.
January 23, 2012
This is one of the more interesting Mass-Observation Diaries that I have read. The writer was very progressive in her attitudes and VERY well-read. An interesting look at day-to-day life in London during the Blitz.
September 15, 2010
Very interesting book about the Blitz and one womans views of it.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews